131–140 of 303 posts
If anyone is considering using a computer like this, I'd recommend OpenBSD for it which genuinely has one of the prettiest console fonts. It just ... Looks nicer.. Yes, I'm sure you can configure the others to look nice too but shrug OOTB is pretty nice.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, and if you want it to boot directly into a tty mode run: sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target As an aside: on some of my computers it is Ctrl+Alt+F2 but on others it is Ctrl+Alt+F7 to return to graphical mode.
Maybe this have changed over the years, and I rarely if ever used these combinations to switch to TTY except for emergency (OOM, or window manager breakage), but on every Linux system I ever used, graphical mode was on (Ctrl+Alt+)F7.
I decided that unproductivity was unacceptable and so I simply engineered out the failure modes.
1. If I skipped a day on my project, the chance of catastrophic derailment increased exponentially. So I decided I had to work on it every day. (But only for an hour, to make it easy.)
2. If I waited until later in the day to begin working, the chance that I would miss a day increased exponentially. So I decided I had to work as soon as I woke up.
3. If I connected to the internet while working, the chance that I got derailed increased exponentially. So I just turned off my router and phone the night before. (Good for sleep hygiene, I did it an hour before bed and found that I could actually concentrate on paper books again, with the infinite Satans removed from my life. What a concept.)
Obviously unplugging your router is going to piss off your housemates, so a good alternative is buying a Wifi repeater for $10 and putting your devices on that. (You can just put them in airplane mode, of course -- but I find the physical ritual of yanking the damn thing out of the wall has something special to it.)
This is an awesome setup. I like it, good job. That said, I do think there's a bit of irony to solving your "paying attention to writing" problem by setting up your OS from scratch, choosing to swap out the default networking stack, installing a novel flavor of your preferred text editor because you're "trying to get to know it a bit more," customizing your battery readouts, tweaking the login sequence, and then, aft…
A couple years ago I was having difficulty working (couldn't get ADHD meds due to unspecified global calamity). I decided that unproductivity was unacceptable and so I simply engineered out the failure modes. 1. If I skipped a day on my project, the chance of catastrophic derailment increased exponentially. So I decided I had to work on it every day. (But only for an hour, to make it easy.) 2. If I waited until later…
This reads like someone with ADHD took Adderall and accidentally focused hard for a day on the wrong thing. It has happened to me. I guess if this writerdeck works persistently for many projects then fine. But if every 2 projects the writerdeck gets revamped then it seems like a way to get a dopamine hit or distract ones self. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't seem like it's a net benefit in terms of focus.
> focused hard for a day on the wrong thing Entirely depends on what the author wanted to focus on. Who are we to say what is the right or wrong thing to focus on?
Just observers pointing out that her stated goal was "to write more." If she uses the writerdeck as-is for a couple years, then, she was one of those rare people that discovered an actual single structural obstacle that stood between her and her goal, and then solved it in one fell swoop.
As an ADHD guy, I completely understand the cycle: have a thing you wish you did more, identify some "obstacles" between you and the thing, or just some friction points, and then really enjoy the process of fixing all those things. Then doing the originally desired thing in my perfect new environment and reveling in the fruits of my labor for a glorious day... Or hour. Skyrim modpacks, emacs configs, keyboard setups, OS tweaking, camping gear fiddling, pen and paper gear fiddling.
That's life, it's valid, whatever. I did find though that there's more effective ways to actually do the things I originally stated I want to do, and the more effective ways seem to be a bit more brute force. So for example, trying to quit my reddit addiction, I tried all the little tricks, little apps that track time, browser extensions, host file blocking, etc. The most long term effective strategy though was asking myself, "am I really going to go my whole life without a reddit-free week?" And then escalating that to a month and so on. Basically escalating cold turkey. I wrote about it - https://blog.calebjay.com/posts/how-to-quit-social-media/
Learning mandarin, was what pushed me over the edge of my plateau the fancy apps I kept trying, all the books I was buying, the really slick annotation setup I had on my Boox? Nope, daily simple Anki deck fed by a spreadsheet combined with going to the south more where people don't speak English that much.
To be fair some of my fiddling has resulted in cool outcomes. The handwriting experiments all finally concluded after years of device fiddling onto a specific kokyu notebook size, a specific journal, and a specific set of pens, all of which I own enough to last a while now. My workout tweaking led to a fun form of cardio where I ruck with a lot of weight, a 360 camera sticking out of my bag, and some OSM apps open, letting me ruck around for hours without getting bored while I do OSM contributions. And lo, my emacs tweaking seems to have finally settled down into a config set that for coding hasn't changed for years, though the note taking/ journaling one did get revamped earlier this year so it's not done.
The way people are coping with the current hellscape that is 2026 is interesting to me. Somehow, it always seems to be internalization. Like, if only I can lock in using this distraction free method, if only I start buying more physical media, if only I use a dumb phone and an mp3 player for my music, etc. etc., somehow that will resolve the intractable shitstorm happening right now. And none of that is even going to…
Yes in terms of surviving the full shit storm, and yes in terms of deriving security and comfort from community, but the things you mentioned are all valid steps on a path to joining the community of people working together on the issue you're trying to solo cope with.
Example: lately those paying attention here in Taiwan are getting the sense that our internet is fragile, and start looking into solutions for that. Many end up at reticulum and meshtastic. They might fiddle a bit, maybe get a Lora radio or whatever, but regardless, this weekend is g0v summit, where there's a lot of talks and a booth about this exact thing, and yesterday a lot of the people I met attending the talks or visiting the booth are brand new to this. But now they're in the scene, plugged in with people that have been spending years tying solar Lora radios to the top of trees throughout the city.
Getting into offline music, you get to the stage where you start trying to find good quality music, and stumble into the soulseek community, or you start wondering more about modding your dumb secondhand hardware, stumble into the mod community. From either of those into the FOSS/open hardware scene, anti-IP scenes, "four thieves vinegar collective" types.
Basically, there's many paths.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pen and paper for writing. Computer for editing.
Paper notebook. I wouldn’t recommend loose sheets of paper. :) After 15 years of writing notes on loose sheets I would start differently :) Go Tim Ferris way - notebook where the first page is left for the table of contents, and number all even-numbered pages as first step.
Soooo.. not to sound like a luddite but to me the best dedicated writing device for me has been just pen and a notebook or a typewriter. There are surprisingly many "portable" typewriter options out there (including electronic ones).
> There are surprisingly many "portable" typewriter options out there (including electronic ones). An odd laptop ($0) with free software ($0) makes more sense than buying another electronic device.
This is an awesome setup. I like it, good job. That said, I do think there's a bit of irony to solving your "paying attention to writing" problem by setting up your OS from scratch, choosing to swap out the default networking stack, installing a novel flavor of your preferred text editor because you're "trying to get to know it a bit more," customizing your battery readouts, tweaking the login sequence, and then, aft…
It it reminds me of a lot of friends who wanted to "start blogging" and their first step was writing a new static site system from scratch.