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Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)

writings.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)

#2

Post by hirundo »

I share the dream of being able to walk through the woods while working online, but there's no way that Dr. Wolfram's approach would work for me. I just can't walk smoothly enough to read comfortably from a screen, particularly not while avoiding roots and rocks. A gimble stabilizer could help with the text but not the refocusing.

So I'm hoping that AR glasses will do the trick before long. If they can project non-jiggly text into the world so that I can rapidly context shift between them with little refocusing, and let me input by wiggling my fingers, I'd pay a lot for it. But I guess lines of code per hour will decline with speed.

Re: Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)

#3

Post by reidjs »

Part of my solution to this is to identify what parts of a project can be done from my phone and then intentionally avoid doing those on the computer.

- Writing correspondence, essays, docs, todolists? The voice-to-text feature works great on iPhones.

- Reading blog posts or articles? Extract text then run it through the iPhone's screen reader.

- Moving trello tasks around? Do it through the phone app. etc.

Re: Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)

#4

Post by sokoloff »

reidjs wrote: post #3

Part of my solution to this is to identify what parts of a project can be done from my phone and then intentionally avoid doing those on the computer. - Writing correspondence, essays, docs, todolists? The voice-to-text feature works great on iPhones. - Reading blog posts or articles? Extract text then run it through the iPhone's screen reader. - Moving trello tasks around? Do it through the phone app. etc.

Writing an essay via voice-to-text on my phone sounds like one of the most painful things I could voluntarily subject myself to.

Siri can't even get simple text messages write (pun intended)

Re: Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)

#5

Post by madars »

sokoloff wrote: post #4
reidjs wrote: post #3

Part of my solution to this is to identify what parts of a project can be done from my phone and then intentionally avoid doing those on the computer. - Writing correspondence, essays, docs, todolists? The voice-to-text feature works great on iPhones. - Reading blog posts or articles? Extract text then run it through the iPhone's screen reader. - Moving trello tasks around? Do it through the phone app. etc.

Writing an essay via voice-to-text on my phone sounds like one of the most painful things I could voluntarily subject myself to. Siri can't even get simple text messages write (pun intended)

The great thing about text editors, and to a large extent also paper, is that they give you random access - you can easily see the whole document and make edits at arbitrary points. It's incredibly ergonomic (there is a reason why books overtook scrolls!) and I doubt voice-driven editing can come close. At the same time, audio is easy for creating conversational-style pieces (e.g. podcasts) but a good final product must always come with timestamped transcripts (how else would one grep and/or skip?)

Re: Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)

#7

Post by Calamitous »

reidjs wrote: post #3

Part of my solution to this is to identify what parts of a project can be done from my phone and then intentionally avoid doing those on the computer. - Writing correspondence, essays, docs, todolists? The voice-to-text feature works great on iPhones. - Reading blog posts or articles? Extract text then run it through the iPhone's screen reader. - Moving trello tasks around? Do it through the phone app. etc.

I’d be curious to hear what you’re using on iPhone for voice-to-text. I’ve tried a few things and the results have been pretty awful for me.

Re: Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)

#9

Post by caust1c »

> I have systems that keep all sorts of data, including every keystroke I type, every step I take and what my computer screen looks like every minute

Yikes? He's smart, so I'm sure he's protected it adequately, but auditing the surface area of this much software seems insane.

Re: Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)

#10

Post by gordon_freeman »

Everything he does I see his keyboard or monitor in the background. I don’t know why he is so much into ‘productivity’ that even for walks he has to be in front of his machine and working? Why can’t he just enjoy walking to relax a bit outdoors. I think walking is as much for mental well being as for improving physical health and decoupling from work and digital life is how I’d like to relax.
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