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Joey Hess' minimal approach

joey.hess.usesthis.com

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Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach

#61

Post by agumonkey »

cweiss wrote: post #58
agumonkey wrote: post #39

Let's make a petition for someone to produce this e-ink open arm laptop. I'd buy one immediately.

My understanding is that the big issue is that e-Ink displays have a miserably slow pixel update time. The new Kindle Paperwhite is on the order of 450ms whereas the average LCD display is in the single digit ms range. Great for static text, but horrid for anything real-time.

I should have mentioned that I'd be using text-mode mostly. With my keyboard refresh rate (25key/sec) => 40ms max per redraw. That's .. quite far. If you look at this old kindle refresh rate, used as a terminal screen for a raspberry pi, it's almost usable : http://www.ponnuki.net/2012/09/kindleberry-pi/

I wonder how it would be on a newer eink screen.

Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach

#62

Post by joeyh »

pwang wrote: post #55
npsimons wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to pull this card on you, but what have you done? We're talking about a Debian developer who has also developed (and continues to develop) basically an open-source replacement for Dropbox ( http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assistan... ), by himself on an incredible budget. He actually Gets Shit Done, and does it relatively efficiently. I would not be surprised at all if a factor towards bein…

> And when you are a creator rather than a consumer (especially of the written word, be it code, essays or books), screen size rarely matters. I don't necessarily agree with the parent post's sentiments, but I also disagree with this very broad blanket statement of yours. I am reasonably happy most of the time on my Macbook Air screen, but I definitely prefer to be coding on a larger screen when I can. I knew Joey ba…

You sure you knew the same guy? My working memory is crap, and, presumably, getting worse. ;)

I find that functional programming really cuts down on the amount of mental state I need to maintain. So while I'll have some API docs and another module or two open for reference, I don't need to worry about what that variable gets set to two pages above.

Maybe avoiding that kind of unnecessary detail makes one's unconscious better able to work on the program too. Still learning about this: http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/on_not_coding_late/

Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach

#63

Post by w1ntermute »

dailo10 wrote: post #50

"I don't use a desk. I work in five or six different places and postures around the house. When the weather's good, I'm outside, or on the porch. My preferred "desktop background" is some interesting view in back of my netbook's rather small screen." This is such a liberating setup. I'm rethinking my need for a home office now.

> This is such a liberating setup.

Yeah, it's "liberating" until you develop chronic back and shoulder pain later in life.

Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach

#64

Post by w1ntermute »

jakobe wrote: post #48

It's great to be reminded that productivity doesn't really depend as much on the tools you use as some might have you believe. I keep thinking about buying a faster laptop, or I'm complaining that getting fiber is way to expensive where I live, and then I read about someone on an ancient tiny netbook on dialup who is probably way more productive than I am.

> I read about someone on an ancient tiny netbook on dialup who is probably way more productive than I am.

And you're not him. It doesn't matter how productive he is on "an ancient tiny netbook on dialup", it matters how productive you would be on it.

Getting a faster laptop or fiber is a simple matter of weighing the costs against the benefits for you. If it increases your productivity enough to outweigh the costs, then you should get it.

Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach

#65

Post by jackalope »

w1ntermute wrote: post #63
dailo10 wrote: post #50

"I don't use a desk. I work in five or six different places and postures around the house. When the weather's good, I'm outside, or on the porch. My preferred "desktop background" is some interesting view in back of my netbook's rather small screen." This is such a liberating setup. I'm rethinking my need for a home office now.

> This is such a liberating setup. Yeah, it's "liberating" until you develop chronic back and shoulder pain later in life.

I'd wager that it's more healthy than most home offices, which tend to restrict you to one position.

Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach

#66

Post by jsn »

w1ntermute wrote: post #63
dailo10 wrote: post #50

"I don't use a desk. I work in five or six different places and postures around the house. When the weather's good, I'm outside, or on the porch. My preferred "desktop background" is some interesting view in back of my netbook's rather small screen." This is such a liberating setup. I'm rethinking my need for a home office now.

> This is such a liberating setup. Yeah, it's "liberating" until you develop chronic back and shoulder pain later in life.

To each his own, I suppose. I've been deskless for 4 years, mostly on a couch in a relaxed position with laptop on my, hmm, laps. It's much more comfortable for me than chairs and desks. I sometimes spend 16 hours per day pressing those keys; I don't think I could've survived that in a chair behind a desk.

Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach

#67

Post by petercooper »

dailo10 wrote: post #50

"I don't use a desk. I work in five or six different places and postures around the house. When the weather's good, I'm outside, or on the porch. My preferred "desktop background" is some interesting view in back of my netbook's rather small screen." This is such a liberating setup. I'm rethinking my need for a home office now.

You should just give it a go. It might work well for you.

It was a total failure for me because I found I needed the psychological aspect of going to an office and sitting at a desk to shift into "work mode." (The anecdotal 'proof' being a 2x jump in income between these two settings.) But we're all different.. luckily :-)

Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach

#68

Post by pplante »

mazsa wrote: post #2

Mmmm.... "What would be your dream setup? I dream of a ARM-based netbook with exceptionally good battery life, an E-ink display, and fully open and non-proprietary hardware. I've put off upgrading for years since this seems such an obvious thing for the market to produce, but the market is fascinated with locked-down tablets instead."

While that device does sound nice to have around, I disagree with the notion that it seems such an obvious thing for the market to produce. It would have very little market appeal outside of the development community in my opinion.

Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach

#69

Post by hollerith »

chrisbolt wrote: post #57
hollerith wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I was subscribed to the security repository, meaning I only got security updates, and over the year and a half I did this, there were probably no more than 10 megs of updates total IIRC. You're probably (and the OP, Joey Hess is definitely) talking about Debian unstable, though, which does not have a security repo. (I was on testing IIRC.) It was not hard to upgrade to a new version of Debian, either, becau…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Software_Update#Command_l...

Apple's update flow is huge, averaging over a gig a month it seems to me. Probably impractical to download it all over dial-up even if you run the updater every night.

But let me ask why you jumped into this conversation: do you or someone you know of have experience keeping OS X patched over a dial-up connection? Do you have reasons to believe it is possible?

Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach

#70

Post by pyre »

agumonkey wrote: post #56
pyre wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's a hardcore Debian guy. I'm sure that if he needs a custom build he probably farms out the compilation to one of his remote servers, and just downloads the resultant .deb file.

Not sure I understand, ghc/platform is hundreds of MB iirc, remotely built or not. Or maybe you meant a tailored ghc distro without all the statically compiled libs and such ?

I assumed that you were referring to compilation time on his netbook, but I guess you were referring to download time over dial-up?
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