Ask HN: Coding outdoors • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Coding outdoors

#41

Post by keenerd » Wed, Jul 23, 2014, 11:23 AM UTC

Most people here have mentioned how a reflective or transflective display helps a lot. These used to be much more plentiful, they were standard on PDAs for example. Kind of rare and expensive now.

One thing that no one has touched on. It is much easier to work if you use an inverted color scheme for your terminals. Black text on a white background works better when front-lighting LCD technology.

Re: Ask HN: Coding outdoors

#42

Post by QuadDamaged » Wed, Jul 23, 2014, 11:24 AM UTC

easyname wrote: post #38

Currently I live at rented room on roof top of a residential building. Temperature of my city(Bangalore) is around 22 degree centigrade( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangalore#Climate ), mostly cloudy. I have setup a table with four chair outside on the roof. I find it pleasant to work outside mostly during morning and evening. In day time if its cloudy and little wind, I feel better working outside. I use macbook an…

I work in an open space in London. Even if I could setup hypothetically get access to a rooftop like you, I'd be pretty much drenching my laptop and catching a cold.

TL;DR: Jealous!

Re: Ask HN: Coding outdoors

#43

Post by viach » Wed, Jul 23, 2014, 11:24 AM UTC

From my personal experience, I just want to suggest you to avoid swimming pools areas and kids with water guns. Anyway, no working outdoors for me anymore.

Re: Ask HN: Coding outdoors

#44

Post by treerock » Wed, Jul 23, 2014, 11:31 AM UTC

If my garden was big enough, I'd get a shed. Or a gazebo, but I'd still call it a shed.

http://www.shedworking.co.uk/2010/07/neil-gaiman-shedworker....

Re: Ask HN: Coding outdoors

#45

Post by benji-york » Wed, Jul 23, 2014, 11:59 AM UTC

I enjoy working outside on a covered porch (for shade). I have neck and wrist issues though, so the standard laptop-in-lap setup doesn't work for me so I build a laptop stand: http://benjiyork.com/pictures/outdoor-office.jpg

Re: Ask HN: Coding outdoors

#46

Post by daemonk » Wed, Jul 23, 2014, 12:56 PM UTC

JetSpiegel wrote: post #23

daemonk wrote: post #19

Is the screen in google glass big enough or bright enough to work on? Ideally, it would be nice not to have to lug around the laptop and burn your thighs. Just have a bluetooth keyboard/mouse connected to a head mounted screen system.

Doesn't that negate the upsides of being outside?

I am not advocating something that covers your entire field of view. But a smaller screen that you can focus on in your field of vision while still being able to see around you.

Re: Ask HN: Coding outdoors

#47

Post by bicx » Wed, Jul 23, 2014, 2:04 PM UTC

easyname wrote: post #38

Currently I live at rented room on roof top of a residential building. Temperature of my city(Bangalore) is around 22 degree centigrade( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangalore#Climate ), mostly cloudy. I have setup a table with four chair outside on the roof. I find it pleasant to work outside mostly during morning and evening. In day time if its cloudy and little wind, I feel better working outside. I use macbook an…

That's a nice setup! Really like the rocks, even if they are just holding down the table cloth.

Re: Ask HN: Coding outdoors

#48

Post by archagon » Wed, Jul 23, 2014, 5:46 PM UTC

Phone tethering makes it really easy; I'm having a lot of fun spending my afternoons coding in the park. Otherwise, if you're away from any connectivity and you're working on something local, I highly recommend the Stack Exchange data dump[1] along with Samuel Lai's excellent Stackdump[2]. I worked without internet for 2 weeks using this setup (+ offline documentation) with great success. (Warning: Stackdump copies the SE XML data into a local database, which currently takes 7 hours on my Haswell i7 and requires extra disk space. Prepare ahead of time!)

[1]: https://archive.org/details/stackexchange

[2]: http://stackapps.com/questions/3610/stackdump-an-offline-bro...

Re: Ask HN: Coding outdoors

#49

Post by innsmouth_rain » Wed, Jul 23, 2014, 6:46 PM UTC

bildung wrote: post #29

I sometimes work in the garden. On cloudy days my Thinkpad display works just fine. If it's really sunny I use a Fujitsu Stylistic tablet pc I bought used on ebay, along with an external keyboard. The Stylistic tablets have (at least used to have) models with transflective displays (the ones with frontlights instead of backlights). Those are awesome in daylight, but look dull indoors. The resolution normally is not t…

This seems extremely interesting but I can not find any pixel qi android or possibly linux compatible product for sale anywhere.

Re: Ask HN: Coding outdoors

#50

Post by innsmouth_rain » Wed, Jul 23, 2014, 6:52 PM UTC

rudenoise wrote: post #28

The kindleberry pi has all the elements I think are essential: - low power - out door readable - light weight The problem is that it isn't in one, handy package. Laptops are limited by displays, it sounds like transflective-LCD is ideal. Panasonic Toughbooks have them, so could be a good bet. I'd like to build an enclosure for a Pi and a PixelQi setup (they made the screens for OLPC). https://www.adafruit.com/product…

I guess that's how the corporates argue. Maybe if it was crowdsourced...