...are not for me lol! Undeterred by my impatience setting up the Alpine terminal email client, I read a couple of articles last night about using terminal-based web browsers. They seemed simple to install so why not give them a go?
Messing around on the web one night last week I went down a reminiscing rabbit hole that took me to the terminal based email client “Pine”. My mind conjured up fond memories from the late '90s of the winding route to the computer room at Van Mildert College in Durham University – left past the high table in the dining room, along a narrow corridor, before queuing up to go down a few steps on the right for my time to surf the fledgling internet with Netscape, or access my email via Pine instead.
The software I use for writing markdown blog posts on my computer, Typora, has moved from its beta testing phase into a commercial offering. Whereas it was free before, it now needs a licence, enabling the user to download it on three separate devices. This gave me pause, as I hadn't twigged it was a testing phase piece of software when I originally downloaded it – or maybe this was something I quickly glossed over... it's hard to remember now!
I've seen a few posts about the mysterious Gemini space, a lightweight, markdown-like section of the online multiverse using a protocol somewhere between the internet we all know and Gopher (which I'd not heard of either). There are https proxies to access it but where's the fun in that? Last night with the babe and The Canadian asleep, I gathered up my courage and set forth to explore!
Spoiler – it's trickier than installing it! Back at the start of lockdown, I distracted myself by installing Kubuntu as dual boot alongside Windows 10 on my wife's Dell XPS 9360. Then I went and bought my own little Linux laptop instead. Fast forward half a year and my wife was running out of space on her hard drive and was getting fed up of having to restart the machine when she forgot to select Windows from the Grub start menu. So, the mission a few weeks ago was to upgrade the SSD and get rid of Linux from the machine. Right then!
Finally got around to digging a little deeper into Latte Dock customisation and now have two different layouts that I'm happy with. The first one features a panel at the top with a global menu and a dock at the bottom, in the vein of Mac OS. In contrast, the second has more of a Windows 10 style panel at the bottom. There are times when I find myself wanting one or the other as a workflow so it's nice to have the option to switch between them. I guess I could have them set up on different KDE Activities but I've never found a compelling enough reason in how I work for multiple screens, whether physical or virtual. Anyway, more details and photos below!
Back in “My Linux journey” blogpost, I mentioned I'd bought a dedicated Linux machine to have fun on – the Star Labs Star Lite Mk II “labtop” is a bit of a curiosity but for a £350 deal seemed like a no-brainer. 11.6” screen but with a glass, premium feel. Small, sleek form factor but solid and heavier than expected! Low powered CPU to fit but 8GB RAM. These sort of modern netbooks usually pack a small amount of flash memory but this has a comparatively huge 240GB SSD, speedy enough but not as quick as top-end devices.
I've been thinking about doing this for awhile and today seemed like the right time. Cutting through the noise of the world, which can sometimes seem overwhelming, to the heart of what matters to me now. Check out https://nownownow.com for more on the concept and a whole range of examples. It might work for you, it might not! It does for me – well for now anyway!
This is my /now page. For me, it is a place to return to when the world gets noisy and complicated and I need to remember what's important. What I should be doing now. You can find out more about /now pages at nownownow.com with links to many other examples.
Updated Monday 22nd February 2021, unpinned/retired Thursday 6th January 2022
Reading other people's blogs on “Read Write.as” and “100 Days to Offload” feels like a mix of voyeurism, a search for inspiration, and through time, an emergent sense of being part of a virtual community. Right now I'm particularly enjoying seeing linkages pop up between blogs. Here are a few examples: