I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode • Hacker News Board

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#311

Post by stottc » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 8:11 AM UTC

excoder wrote: post #275

Splines wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. A thousand times this. I use perforce for my daily work, and all too often I'll get to a stopping point and think to myself that my approach isn't working - usually I'll wrap my stuff up in a changelist and save the diff off to a file. Then I need to revert to latest and start my work from there. It's not hard, but it's slightly painful, because if I wanted to try different approaches I end up having dpks lying…

Um ... you might want to try `p4 help shelve` first. Shelved changelists are basically the same as a "git stash" - but they're stored on the server, so other developers on your team can review a changelist before you actually submit it. One of my favorite Perforce features, actually.

Changelists are a feature I really miss in other source control. It's nice to be able to keep orthogonal changes separate

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#312

Post by Buzzzz » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 8:15 AM UTC

pseudonym wrote: post #218

orthecreedence wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$800 gets you a LOT more than an iPad. I can see the advantage of working in the cloud, but working off of an iPad to smells of "hey! hey everyone!! look at me! look what I'm doing!" Not to mention there is now a monthly fee to program. That's not economical.

Just to toss this out here, but $20/mo for a linode, is not a huge investment, and it's something that I have even without doing everything "in the cloud". It's handy for those quick file transfers, a small portfolio site, and since you have root access, you can quickly set up or take down any odd services without the hassle of finding a distinct hosting service (Mumble, Mercurial, Subversion, or what have you). But…

How does the cost of light usages like this compares to aws?

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#313

Post by scorpioxy » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 8:43 AM UTC

kellishaver wrote: post #301

julian37 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm mostly with sliverstorm (and upvoted him). People often wonder why I'm working on a 13" Macbook and ask if the display isn't too small. That's when I point to my head and tell them that's where the action takes place, not on the keyboard or the screen. (Obligatory: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s... ) That said, decent ergonomics are almost always a good thing. Even if you're not typing a…

> Having a bad setup maybe doesn't matter for your wrists in this case but it can still be detrimental to your eyesight and of course your back. I'm 33 and a year and a half ago I was diagnosed with degenerative disc disease in my neck from spending many years hunched over looking at things. I am extremely near-sighted (legally blind, actually) and that's the only way I can see to do... well, pretty much anything. I…

Can you share the name of your pillow? What does it help with?

I can't really find a good pillow(that and a good bed). I'm not in the US so don't have many local choices, but might be able to ship it.

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#314

Post by anthonyb » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 11:12 AM UTC

> The iPhone keyboard is somewhat painful to use, but for rm -rf /tmp/build-2011-* it suffices.

Is it just me, or does the thought of typing rm -rf on an iPhone keyboard sound a little... dangerous?

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#315

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 11:15 AM UTC

anthonyb wrote: post #314

> The iPhone keyboard is somewhat painful to use, but for rm -rf /tmp/build-2011-* it suffices. Is it just me, or does the thought of typing rm -rf on an iPhone keyboard sound a little... dangerous?

[deleted]

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#316

Post by moconnor » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 11:15 AM UTC

anthonyb wrote: post #314

> The iPhone keyboard is somewhat painful to use, but for rm -rf /tmp/build-2011-* it suffices. Is it just me, or does the thought of typing rm -rf on an iPhone keyboard sound a little... dangerous?

The best part is, I was root.

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#317

Post by kokey » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 11:24 AM UTC

zyfo wrote: post #241

kokey wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using screen for over 16 years now. The only time I have code on my local machine is if I'm writing code to interface with hardware directly or developing for a console like the GP2X. Otherwise, my computer has mostly been a terminal to servers out there which I never physically get to see. I can switch between machines at home or at work and resume my screen session. In other words, it seems like I've been…

What about lag? I find sometimes on bad connections that tmux lags quite a bit (in Sweden, sever in UK). How do you deal with this? Surely packet loss and latency must've been a bigger problem a decade ago.

Lag, well I used to dial up from South Africa, to places in Europe or the US. The call was normally blue boxed over analog satellite lines, one or two hops to a geostationary satellite and back. I used to bring my speed down to 7200bps since it was the most stable. I tolerated that because I had no other choice, and you learn to type very accurate that way and pause at certain moments because the next command will be a bad idea if you get the previous command wrong. (e.g. cd /tmp/bar ; rm -rf foo )

Things have improved for me a lot since. It does help that I live in the UK now. I believe nowadays within Europe something must be wrong to notice the difference (especially with SSH compression and screen), and the latency between the UK and the US has improved so much recently that I've forgotten that most of the servers I've been working on the past year is on the other side of the Atlantic.

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#318

Post by bbwharris » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 1:06 PM UTC

I tried doing this, but it felt like I wanted to make this setup happen. It just wasn't there for me. The idea is elegant and simple, but the reality is that having a laptop is just more efficient. One day, this might be the nomadic developers toolbox.

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#319

Post by nileshk » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 1:35 PM UTC

rsl7 wrote: post #250

nileshk wrote: post #138

The last time I tried to use SSH under iOS with the Apple bluetooth keyboard (trying different SSH apps including iSSH and TouchTerm) I found that I could not comfortably use Emacs due to various key combinations not being transmitted (I guess Vim isn't as much of a problem). One of the SSH app developers said that they were not able to trap certain keystrokes that were iOS keyboard shortcuts. Looks like this may sti…

In my experience, Prompt is much better app for straightforward terminal use than iSSH. It handles meta keys very well includig the hardware ESC key on the wireless keyboard that iSSH could not, last time I tried it.

Are there any tricks to getting Prompt working correctly? Ctrl seems to work good, at least the keys I tried (Ctrl-A/E/N/P/K/T). When connecting to a Linux box, I can get some of meta keys to kinda work, but most of them do unexpected things. When connecting to an OS X box, option just spits out special characters. Prompt doesn't appear to have any configuration option for what type of terminal emulation, so I guess my only options are to configure the shell I am connecting to.

I just tried the latest versions of both Prompt and iSSH on iOS 5 on an iPhone 3GS. Prompt is at least a big improvement over iSSH in this area, but, unless I can figure out how to get it to work better, it is definitely not something I'd be comfortably using for Emacs.

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#320

Post by 6ren » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 1:38 PM UTC

Isn't the latency of vim on a remote server distracting? Or is your ping low enough to not be noticeable?

I've thought about this kind of setup, but I think I'd need vim to be running locally (but working on files from a remote filesystem - vim can do this).