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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

#111

Post by icebraining »

desdiv wrote: post #108
icebraining wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9€ for 20GB and it works everywhere in Europe? That sounds like an amazing deal. Can you tell me which provider you're using?

I Googled around and found this: >Giga International: 9 € - including 20 GB data valid for 28 days. The activation fee is 5 € and the SIM card is 9 €, making the total cost 25 € for the first month and 9 € for subsequent months. This offer is only for customers with foreign citizenship. [0] http://prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.com/wiki/Italy

Thanks!

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#112

Post by virtualwhys »

leoedin wrote: post #55

This is written in October. He's been living in the van since the middle of May. Basically late spring, summer and early autumn. How is he going to feel after another 150 days? Camping in winter can be fun, but it's not warm. At all. Trying to work in a van when it's below freezing outside will be pretty hard work. I can't even type when the room drops below 15 degrees. Vans like the one he has are basically uninsula…

He'll go down to the Algarve like all the other young surfers and retirees do in the winter. Loads of sun, dry, and air temps 16 to 20 degrees. It's generally gorgeous, like an extended autumn.

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#113

Post by yoavm »

submeta wrote: post #58
yoavm wrote: post #26

I'm doing the same in Israel for almost two years now! The photos-haiku-blog is in Hebrew, but well photos are universal. http://bus.house/

Holy cow. What happened to your social life, if I may ask? Friends, family. How do you maintain your relationships?

Israel is a tiny country. You can spend a week on the top of some mountain not seeing any human being, and then drive 30mins and be with your friends. I enjoy being able to choose when to be completely alone and when to be surrounded with friends and family. Besides, I can definitely stay in the middle of Tel-Aviv with my bus (without paying the crazy rent!). That's where I am currently, actually.

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#114

Post by dx034 »

remus wrote: post #92
classisch wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! I'm the author of that article. I respect your opinion and I totally agree that van life is not for everyone. However it's seems funny that I've never experienced one of your concerns: > I would totally hate the lack of space and comfort. I have 12 square meters and my bed is super comfortable. Most of the time I'm outside. Works perfect for me. > I'd sleep really poorly at night when it's super hot in summer an…

> In Europe the 4G network coverage is amazing. Within the last five months I had less issues with my connectivity than some of my co-workers using a cable internet. Same experience for me. I've got a 4G dongle that I use for travelling and it's both faster and more reliable than my home broadband connection (no fiber available in my area). Just keeping an eye out for a cheap 4G data SIM so I can switch to the dongle…

But only if you're abroad temporarily. Living in a van could mean that you use more data abroad than in your home country. Roaming rules don't apply so you'd have to get a sim card from the country you're in.

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#115

Post by jstewartmobile »

coldtea wrote: post #103
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'm curious - don't people miss big monitors when coding on a laptop? No. Some of us work even more focused on a single smaller screen even than having 10 BS windows asking for our attention (and I include debuggers in those, the ultimate hop-around time sink for some developers). Besides, people managed to write software for several decades before larger than 14" screens became the norm. Heck, until the late seven…

And that's the way it was, and we liked it, dag nabbit!

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#116

Post by DennisP »

codesnik wrote: post #80
robotmay wrote: post #31

I've met a few people living in vans/converted trucks when I've been in France. There's quite a few countries around with great regulations that let you park up in lots of places, e.g. in France there are regular places you can stay along the major roads for free, usually with decent facilities. I met a girl there this year who had converted a truck into a mobile home. It even had window boxes for her plants! Unfortu…

how's it going? I love to move around with my laptop, but nature is too damn distractive. Sun is too bright, stone under my ass is too cold, that view is too beautiful, oh, I'm already hungry, oh, it's sunset. That was a nice day, but I barely worked.

I'm just the opposite. If I really want to concentrate on a hard problem, I take my laptop to the park, and sit at a picnic table surrounded by trees, overlooking a lake.

For routine stuff I just need to crank out, it's headphones and coffee, but real thinking I do better in nature. All the mental distractions and trivia fade away.

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#117

Post by dx034 »

coldtea wrote: post #107
leoedin wrote: post #55

This is written in October. He's been living in the van since the middle of May. Basically late spring, summer and early autumn. How is he going to feel after another 150 days? Camping in winter can be fun, but it's not warm. At all. Trying to work in a van when it's below freezing outside will be pretty hard work. I can't even type when the room drops below 15 degrees. Vans like the one he has are basically uninsula…

> How is he going to feel after another 150 days? Camping in winter can be fun, but it's not warm. At all. Depends on the country. There are places where winter is like 30 degrees. And you can always have a portable heater -- in a small van it will heat it up completely.

Driving from Berlin? Most of southern Europe can be very cold (even Portugal and Spain) in winter. Maybe some parts of Turkey will stay warmer but not sure about that. Or maybe southern Greece.

And the problem is that weather is not independent. If it's very cold in Portugal for a few weeks it's usually also cold in much of the rest of Southern Europe.

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#119

Post by dx034 »

classisch wrote: post #49
d--b wrote: post #7

Good for him... I would totally hate the lack of space and comfort. I'd sleep really poorly at night when it's super hot in summer and cold in winter. I'd hate it to have to look for a good internet to work. I'd miss my friends all the time. I'd dislike having to socialize with random van neighbors every time I want to not dine alone. I wouldn't last a month of this...

Hey! I'm the author of that article. I respect your opinion and I totally agree that van life is not for everyone. However it's seems funny that I've never experienced one of your concerns: > I would totally hate the lack of space and comfort. I have 12 square meters and my bed is super comfortable. Most of the time I'm outside. Works perfect for me. > I'd sleep really poorly at night when it's super hot in summer an…

> In Europe the 4G network coverage is amazing. Within the last five months I had less issues with my connectivity than some of my co-workers using a cable internet.

Do you get enough data volume? Most sim cards for use with computer are quite restricted. Or can you live off 10GB/month?

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#120

Post by bboozzoo »

richardknop wrote: post #67
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.

Lot of top universities around Europe are in smallish cities (200-300k people). I don't know why you think top universities are only in London/Berlin/Paris. That's not true at all, especially in Europe. Not sure about US.

Or even smaller than 200k people, try KU Leuven for instance.
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