Time to talk about my writerdeck

https://veronicaexplains.net/my-first-writerdeck/

by hggh • 2 months ago

517 293 2 months ago

veronicaexplains.net

jlundberg• 2 months ago

The stress relief of a plain old Linux terminal should not be underestimated.

Not only for writing, but for shell sessions too.

I love my Raspberry Pi for that.

ramses03• 2 months ago

Just zellij instead of tmux, it's so much better!

allendoerfer• 2 months ago

How?

ramses03• 2 months ago

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=zellij

dragonfax• 2 months ago

Reminds me of word processing on DOS back in the 80s and early 90s. Pre-WYSIWYG.

vidarh2• 2 months ago

Especially with that colour palette it very much gives Word Perfect 5.1 vibes[1], which I suspect is either directly intentional, or indirectly so (inspiration from something inspired by WP)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect#/media/File:Wordpe...

itrunsdoomguy• 2 months ago

Awesome machine. Missing Doom though.

Shellban3• 2 months ago

https://github.com/wojciech-graj/doom-ascii

daoboy3• 2 months ago

I'm desperately awaiting the perfect eink device for this.

I've got a great writing setup on Obsidian that really works for me, a royal kludge mechanical keyboard...just waiting on the next gen of eink

The Boox One Note Max was sooo close, but they almost immediately discontinued the product and probably won't be supporting it long.

Suggestions are welcome

drakonka5• 2 months ago

I use the Onyx Boox Palma for a portable eink drafting setup. It's worked pretty well. I wrote about it here: https://liza.io/portable-writing-setup-with-onyx-boox-palma/

daoboy3• 2 months ago

That's very similar to the setup I'm working on, including the stand. Thanks for sharing!

One of the appealing features on the Note Max was the screen size (13.3"). How do you find working on such a small screen?

stavros3• 2 months ago

The keyboad

Perhaps you should have chosen a better one?!

chunkyks2• 2 months ago

My wife bought one of these: https://getfreewrite.com/products/freewrite-traveler

Reviews are wildly polarised. * Some folks find it to be the best thing ever [long battery life, the new patch makes the eink surprisingly fastly responsive, decent keyboard, no distractions] * While others find it terrible [it's still eink, that's a lot of money for a device that doesn't actually do much]

You can find a selection of alternatives, and homebrewed options, here: https://www.writerdeck.org/

3eb7988a1663• 2 months ago

That looks really cool, but that price point. I could get a Steam Deck + travel keyboard and still come out ahead.

Is that the true price for a low volume, niche product? Eink monopoly continues to make the world worse?

Looked it up, and the original One Laptop per Child came in around $200

daoboy3• 2 months ago

That homebrew page is pure gold. Thank you for the suggestion!

wolvoleo4• 2 months ago

Looks great but the price is pretty insane, and really the eink should be a lot bigger. So much wasted space on the bezels.

helterskelter• 2 months ago

Ideally, somebody like Modos would create a replacement e-ink display for the Framework.

aftergibson• 2 months ago

If your up for waiting and the usual crowd funding risks there's https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zerowriter/zerowriter-f...

I backed it myself.

dredmorbius4• 2 months ago

Onyx iterates on its BOOX tablets fairly rapidly, but tends to continuously offer something in various size classifications. You'll find 13.3" tablets typically named as "Max" something or other.

I do see the Note Max as presently available, FWIW: <https://shop.boox.com/products/notemax>

I've had a previous iteration of their 13.3" tablet, the Max Lumi. Slightly lower resolution, and has a frontlight. It is a very nice display, though with an Android OS which I see as a net negative.

I'd really like an e-ink display option for the Framework 12" or 13" laptop.

dv35z3• 2 months ago

My dream device is the "Solar A5 e-ink computer" - It's A5-sized laptop, so it fits in a leather zipped case for journals. If you're familiar with HP Journadas / Sony Vaios from early 2000s, that's roughly the form factor. There's a solar panel on the back of the screen / outside of the enclosure. The screen is e-ink, and the operating system is Linux Mint Debian Edition. For console mode, a good "writing station" applications are "mc" (Midnight Commander) and "ranger" - simple GUI for editing text in folders, like a blog/knowledge base.

Some challenges I've experienced: (1) Can't find A5-sized e-ink screens that accept HDMI as an input, (2) It would be cool to use a common Android phone, since there are many around. RaspberryPI is an option. Honestly, would love the simplest portable device that runs Debian Stable on a battery, (3) I have NOT been able to find small, A5-sized keyboards. Most small keyboards are cheap plastic bluetooth junk.

If anyone would like to seriously rally around this, let's talk'bout it. My vision for this laptop has always been "10:00 AM Austin Texas, sitting at a patio bar in direct sun, journalling/coding/writing". I have not been able to find any computer device that satisfies that situation, so there is obviously a market niche.

josmar• 2 months ago

I use a Bigme Hibreak Pro eink phone, nix-on-droid/ssh to home server over tailscale, and a foldable keyboard, to have my coding setup with me and not be tied to where I can carry a laptop.

For foldable keyboards, if they are flimsy or stable matters.

timeinput• 2 months ago

I use a pine note + a bluetooth keyboard + SSH / VPN to make that work for me. It's acceptable. I would like "a laptop", but it's fine.

arkenflame• 2 months ago

If you want something you can use today with a Kindle or other e-reader I made an app for this https://solarwriter.msol.io

caconym_3• 2 months ago

The Pomera line of devices from the Japanese company "King Jim" (yeah, I don't know) are really nice from a features point of view: limited enough to stay out of your way when you're writing, functional enough to enable the basic workflows you'd expect e.g. basic file management, SD card/USB transfers (something that many/most/all Western boutique writing devices like the Freewrite somehow didn't support well or at all last time I checked). Somewhere I have a funky e-ink Pomera thing with a folding keyboard that I did a lot of writing on, and later I bought a DM250, which is not e-ink but works pretty much the same, and now has a US version. I recommend it.

celsius1414• 2 months ago

The US version (the DM250US) is now $549, alas. I was looking at these briefly, but can’t justify the expense — might as well get a MacBook Neo if I were in the market.

normie3000• 2 months ago

I'm trying to be more intentional with my tech choices. I want devices that do one thing really well, and that when I'm done with that one thing, I can put them away, and do something else. I don't want everything to follow me around everywhere.

Sign me up.

I would like an audio device which can play mp3, podcasts, internet radio. Bonus points if it supports some kind of cartridge system, size between credit card and audio cassette. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

CharlesW• 2 months ago

You have hundreds of options for devices like this. Amazon alone shows 200, or well over 300 if you don't need live internet audio streams.

You're about to respond: "But many of these use Android, and general purpose computers are too distracting for me." In that case, you'll need to forego live internet audio streams and buy a closed option with a radio receiver.

skydhash4• 2 months ago

I would like an audio device which can play mp3, podcasts, internet radio.

That internet radio is a whole magnitude of complexity, especially with the need for wifi (cellular?) if it needs to be portable. But there are options like specially modified android devices.

I have the Shangling M0 with a 512GB card. I don’t even bother with converting my flac files. A nice other device is my kobo. It holds my entire fiction library with space to spare.

Rotundo• 2 months ago

I would like an audio device which can play mp3, podcasts, internet radio.

Get a second-hand Apple iPod Touch, remove all apps you don't need.

For just mp3 and podcasts: get an iPod Classic (or Video) and install Rockbox.

Rockbox is amazing.

manaskarekar• 2 months ago

Doogie Howser M.D. vibes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX0_Tuzr4wE

LeoPanthera• 2 months ago

Consider wordgrinder, a console word processor, as distinct from a text editor. https://github.com/davidgiven/wordgrinder

vidarh2• 2 months ago

I don't think I could go this far, because I'd have too many devices to switch between.

But I like the overall idea.

It also fits in well with something I used to think about a lot: Computers and the internet have caused a major shift toward hiding a lot of things that used to be much more apparent.

E.g. your important papers would be in a physical file. Your books would be on the shelves. Your art on the walls. Visitors and family members could see them. Quite a few things I have in common with my late dad were a result of finding his books on the shelves as physical objects.

Now most of the books I've bought (and a couple I've written) over the last couple of decades are on my phone or my computer, and not visible to anyone who doesn't know where to look.

I've tried to be deliberate about showing my son the books I think he'll like, but those of my dads books, and manuscripts he wrote, that I ended up picking up and reading were only partially those he showed me - many more were books he had no inkling I'd like, or didn't think were age appropriate, that I stumbled on over the years.

Moving all of those things into files on general purpose devices, away from physical objects, feels like it is unmooring us from parts of our immediate surroundings.

coffeefirst• 2 months ago

I’ve started to undo it. Not everything, but I went back and bought used copies of every ebook that I wanted to keep forever.

It was pretty cheap (many used books are $1) and feels good to have my full library browsable and free from any platform or company.

jimbokun6• 2 months ago

There’s also a distinct joy of wondering through a library looking at the spines of books on the shelves, occasionally pulling one down to scan the table of contents, and taking one or a few of those to a table to read a couple pages…

dangus• 2 months ago

I like the idea of the setup and the philosophy behind it but I don’t like the implementation as much.

If I’m spending a lot of time with text I’d really like the text and editor to have a much better aesthetic appearance than what I’m seeing here.

I also think having something with graphical capability is nice to have but I know that’s a preference thing. For me, a mouse is a valuable tool in a text editor even if that usage is occasional.

I also think there is a lot of manual setup of things like keyboard brightness controls and battery status that are already built in to every mainstream Linux distro imaginable.

I would have gone about it in some other way like:

1. Install Fedora/Linux Mint/whatever

2. Make a login script that opens Obsidian or an editor of choice upon login and puts it in full screen mode.

3. Hide the KDE taskbar and/or just choose a highly minimal window manager.

4. Done.

ltbarcly3• 2 months ago

It looks like a chromebook running vim in a 50 point font. I can't wait to read 50 pages of how to do that!

fsckboy• 2 months ago

HN deletes certain words at the beginnings of submitted titles: could we add "It's time to talk about" and potentially also "my"?

kwertyoowiyop• 2 months ago

What we talk about when we talk about…

The unreasonable effectiveness of…

All you need is…

ramon156• 2 months ago

I kinda like it. I'd even do something like "its time everyone talks about ..." As long as you don't take yourself too serious, people won't either

chungusamongus9• 2 months ago

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 be a drop in the ocean in terms of making your life better. Only collective action has the potential to do that at this stage.

bigyabai4• 2 months ago

And none of that is even going to be a drop in the ocean in terms of making your life better.

I disagree 100%. Collective action isn't ever going to persuade Apple or Google to correct course. Collective action has already failed to compel Microsoft for 30+ years. These companies picked their side and your bargaining has zero leverage if you continue to purchase their products and suffer their indignation.

You can only improve your life by getting rid of disrespectful advertising and low-quality slopware. The victim mindset is a lazy lie, one that you tell yourself to justify a net negative lifestyle.

chungusamongus9• 2 months ago

The victim mindset? What about my initial statement implies that I perceive myself or others as victims? Sounds like projection.

black_puppydog• 2 months ago

Nothing opposes a setup like this to collective action. Given that most of modern technology or at least most of the internet is built to actively distract you as much as possible to extract profit, it's just a sane choice to disconnect from this every now and again if you want to work on things that actually matter. And this can totally include things that are for the collective good, and in collective efforts.

chungusamongus9• 2 months ago

It just seems like copium to me. The consolation prize is we get to come up with niche lifestyle preferences to cut out the distractions. We can fine tune our lives to increase productivity. More and more optimization until we're just machines. And then people will use that as a way to feel superior to the sheep who continue to scroll tiktok.

Mezzie• 2 months ago

I consider it a good first step.

Of course people reach for individualized solutions first: We (Americans at least) live in a very individualized society.

But these individualized solutions still represent a shift in mindset, of people believing they have agency around how they use technological tools, and of people believing they should make those choices and not a company or the government. This seems very basic and self-evident to anyone who spends time on HN, but it is genuine progress for a lot of people.

chungusamongus9• 2 months ago

Less than 1% of the population is going to do anything remotely close to any of these things. It's just a niche lifestyle preference.

jrflowers3• 2 months ago

Me, seeing someone eating ice cream: “Here is one of several copies of The Permanent Revolution that I keep on my person for this exact situation”

shermantanktop• 2 months ago

If it’s something like chocolate brownie truffle ice cream, that’s clearly a bourgeois citizen who needs their consciousness raised.

chungusamongus9• 2 months ago

It's not ice cream though. Quite the opposite. It's this notion that puritanical self discipline at the individual level will somehow get us out of this. It won't.

ares623• 2 months ago

I agree. Collective action can come in two shapes.

One is that enough individuals take action, and the things you list are that, an individual taking action. If enough individuals do it then goal accomplished.

The other is making our politicians force other individuals to do it.

IMO both are necessary. There's some things where decades have proven that individuals are too "weak" to resist the pull of their urges (and nevermind those urges have trillions of dollars of R&D to make them as strong as possible so it's an unfair battle).

turtlebits• 2 months ago

You don't need to solve whats going on around you, just whatever works for you. The fact your chose the word "coping" says more about your mindset than those you're generalizing about.

lanyard-textile2• 2 months ago

Some people merely have the urge to create -- For those people, it has little to do with coping. They would like a distraction free environment regardless.

I'm certainly one of those people :)

It's very meditative to solely focus on the one thing in front of you.

geerlingguy• 2 months ago

I bought an iPod again this year, and started buying MP3s instead of streaming songs.

It's so nice to sit in a chair, close my eyes, and listen to a soundtrack or an old album.

I'm getting old.

komali23• 2 months ago

Only collective action has the potential to do that at this stage.

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.

beej71• 2 months ago

Only collective action has the potential to do that at this stage.

Nothing resolves the shit storm, but it is absolutely possible to not be in it. Don't need collective action for that.

chungusamongus9• 2 months ago

Sounds like reflexive impotence. It’s difficult to respect people who say things like this.

jimbokun6• 2 months ago

And your copium is posting to HN explaining to everyone how they are Doing It Wrong.

chungusamongus9• 2 months ago

Maybe. Doesn't mean I'm wrong.

righthand2• 2 months ago

No one is trying to solve the shitstorm for everyone, they’re trying to escape it for themselves. No one can do anything about the uninformed masses addicted to the tech world that was previously propped up as great because so much money was moving around the space.

A lot of the complaining in the comments that “this doesnt solve anything for the masses” or “its too complex for the problem space” are totally missing the point. It’s not about you or the greater society. Greater society has chosen the slippery slope race to the bottom and can’t be saved because they can’t be bothered with taking on a little extra complexity or doing things to help themselves.

Non-hotswappable life improvements/tech that don’t make life faster/more efficient?! Oh the humanity!

A collective action will only improve things for the least common denominator of the collective…which isn’t that helpful to the individual who is already unable to change things for the collective. It was the collective that helped create the shitstorm why work with them?

em-bee6• 2 months ago

the key goal here seems to be to remove temptation. for me just switching to a virtual console and firing up vim there would be enough because switching back to the gui would involve typing a long password which i believe for me would be deterrent enough to not keep switching on a whim. if you are not as easily tempted then running a terminal in fullscreen might just be enough.

a1o• 2 months ago

I would love a KingJim Pomera DM 250 but I can’t have it shipped easily and it is hard to find in a physical store.

stavros3• 2 months ago

Jesus christ I cannot believe it took this article for me to realize after so many years that leaving the root password empty would set my user up for sudo. Every single installation, the first thing I'd do is log in and lock root and give my user sudo!

No more of that! Thanks, this article!

salamander014• 2 months ago

I've wanted to do this for a while. Thanks for detailing your setup! I hope one day I find the time to try it.

I've also always yearned for more usability from just the command line.

There's no tui spotify client, is there? Maybe I should break out my mp3 collection again... I'm trying to think of what else I'd really need to not need a GUI machine for my day to day. Maybe email?

Lynx and other tui browsers are not usable on today's web. Maybe there's a subculture to find somewhere that also appreciates reader-mode / lack of javascript?

If so anyone please lead me to the promise land!

qsort3• 2 months ago

It's hard to find the kind of person who likes both, but the ultimate CLI enabler is AI. Ironically, since the rise of actually useful agents I've been using less web and GUI stuff and more CLI. git, ssh, vim, tmux, psql, sqlite3, codex, claude. What more can I ask for? The "there's a unix pipeline for that" mentality that was technically true but ultimately impractical 5 years ago now works phenomenally well. I wouldn't go as far as removing the gui entirely from my machine, but I'm literally down to the modern web browser as the final holdout.

jimbokun6• 2 months ago

I agree that UX in the LLM age has been woefully under explored. I feel like whole new paradigms are waiting to be explored, but right now everyone is just trying to shoehorn AI into a corner of existing UIs.

mamcx• 2 months ago

Like https://github.com/Rigellute/spotify-tui ?

There is a tons of "modernized" TUI since Rust/Go, and even better terminal and shells.

TiredOfLife4• 2 months ago

There is https://www.cliamp.stream/

tedd4u• 2 months ago

1) Cool! Only think I can recommend is using use a taller 4:3-ish screen (like a Framework) for this. You could maybe have two columns of text available.

2) More broadly, one tip I've found to reduce phone engagement is to set the phone to black & white only. It's significantly less interesting and prone to sucking you in. (You can do this on iOS & Android.)

homeonthemtn• 2 months ago

This is what Lao Tzu writer studio will be once the hardware version drops. A specialized writing deck akin to a modern type writer but feature rich and sleeeeeek

hank8083• 2 months ago

"Writerdeck' or simple word processor? They were first sold in the 1960s or 70s. Why? Buy, not build I'm thinking.

kibwen• 2 months ago

The author already had the hardware, better to not buy than to buy.

hank8083• 2 months ago

You're not gettin' the point. There's nothing here if you think about it for 10 seconds. Any ancient anything, could run vi, or vim, or Emacs, or friggin' wordstar, natively or via emulation or WHATEVER. There's nothing here.

cl3misch• 2 months ago

I had to set my syncthing web GUI to be listening on all addresses instead of just 127.0.0.1. I don't love this approach, but again, this thing has nothing private on it.

OP mentions SOCKS proxy but you can also just port-forward the one web ui port instead:

    ssh -nNT writerdeck -L 8484:localhost:8384

and visit http://localhost:8484 on your normal machine.

ChuckMcM• 2 months ago

This is a really interesting system. I find that I end up using an iPad with all my PDFs as reference materials when I'm writing, it would be nice to attach an external monitor in 'portrait' mode which exclusively hosted a single application that could let me select PDFs from my collection and display them on the screen. Then with one unit I'd have what I needed in one place.

owenversteeg• 2 months ago

I've accidentally made one of these; I broke X on an old thinkpad with Arch and never bothered to fix it.

The problem for me is getting myself to actually use it. Most of the time, it sits there gathering dust. If anyone has tips for this I'd love to hear them.

cyberpunk• 2 months ago

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.

em-bee6• 2 months ago

what are the names of the fonts are they using?

i found something here, but i am not sure if these are the right ones: https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/src/share/misc/pcvtfonts?sort=Fil...

skydhash4• 2 months ago

Those are fonts you can load with the vga driver. Anything recent will load with the drm driver (intel, amd) or framebuffer. This emulates a text mode (rasops) on a graphical surfaces (vga has dedicated text mode), and for that they use spleen.

https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/src/sys/dev/wsfont?sort=File

https://github.com/fcambus/spleen

And yes, it’s quite nice.

treve• 2 months ago

I've been wondering if I can somehow get the Toshiba Satellite VGA font back to today.

CobrastanJorji3• 2 months ago

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, after all that effort to make sure you'd have the perfect environment for uninterrupted writing sessions, installing tmux so that you'll be able to do multiple things at a time.

cgriswald3• 2 months ago

I went with paper and pen precisely because there was always more I wanted to do with my computer work flow.

obsidianbases14• 2 months ago

Pen and paper for writing. Computer for editing.

nine_k2• 2 months ago

When I need to write something, and I have a computer, and something is inconvenient, I can quickly (well, within minutes, maybe 30 of them) alter it to my liking, and return to writing.

When I only have a pen and paper (which I used extensively for writing at school), many things may be inconvenient, but there's no way to fix it. This may turn into a source of a low-key stress, and interfere with my writing much more than tweaking a computer would.

I use Emacs, an ultimate tweaker's tool, for writing every day. Last time I had to tweak something in it was a few weeks ago, and it took maybe 2-3 minutes. It's a small price to pay for a tool that just does what you need, when you need it, with zero mental load, and zero frustration.

laweijfmvo• 2 months ago

how did you decide which pens to go with?

michaelbuckbee• 2 months ago

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.

cortesoft3• 2 months ago

I think it is great to combine two personal projects into one!

For me, I can't learn anything unless I actually have a purpose for it. So if I wanted to learn how to write a static site system, I would also need to think of a reason I need one!

yjftsjthsd-h• 2 months ago

It's very convenient to have a first project all ready to blog about, fresh in your mind and everything:D

phyzix5761• 2 months ago

That's how most of us started blogging lol

embedding-shape3• 2 months ago

But how am I supposed to be productive writing blogposts unless I can copy my favorite Clojure templating library into Nix first, so I can have completely statically and reproducible blog posts building from markdown together with the nicest type of templating?

samch• 2 months ago

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/974/

cultofmetatron• 2 months ago

I feel so called out ^_^

eichin2• 2 months ago

yeah, part of my current writing push was made more successful by two things:

* I am not allowed to use a blogging system I wrote. (Really, I've written three or four at this point and need to stop, and there are plenty of existing systems that still align with my idiosyncratic constraints.)

* The blog must not have any meta content about blog tooling.

(I cheated a little on the latter by having an extra "site" blog for that - which lets me get the words out but doesn't "count" for the writing goal. A useful outlet, but it meant an extra month or so before "real writing" outnumbered meta writing :-)

crimsontech2• 2 months ago

But then they have something to write about as their first post.

Shellban3• 2 months ago

*whistles innocently*

throw109204• 2 months ago

Or friends who want to "make a game" and their first step is writing game engine from scratch.

I wouldn't be surprised if programmers had, collectively, written more game engines than actual games.

egeozcan• 2 months ago

I think writing a static site generator was the first moment I felt like I may be serious about this programming thing.

Those losers who still need Perl on their servers better be ready for a mind explosion

...thought, me back in (too lazy to look up which year it was). I probably published like two things with it, spent (what felt like) a million person hours on it, just to abandon it and use Textpattern.

debesyla• 2 months ago

Or when I wanted to write a novel and went into world-building fantasy enciclopedia for two years... I didn't even pass the page 2 of the novel, lol. Now it's all forgotten.

theodric• 2 months ago

They don't want to blog, they want to have blogged

delis-thumbs-7e• 2 months ago

”Friends”. Yeah, right.

(I admit, I am guilty).

treavorpasan• 2 months ago

Isn't this the definition of procrastination?

sidpatil• 2 months ago

https://rakhim.org/honestly-undefined/19/

katzgrau• 2 months ago

“Yak shaving”

It’s a classic move.

Start a new diet, so you join a gym and or buy a bunch of workout stuff.

I won’t knock it though. An important minority of my yak-shaving endeavors have led to long term positive outcomes.

shoopadoop• 2 months ago

You want to play some old classic games so you spend five days getting a Raspberry Pi set up just right with Retroarch and then when it's setup just right you do something else.

Waterluvian• 2 months ago

This is a thing I see everywhere. It’s the carpenter who mostly just builds jigs and french cleats for their workshop. Or the programmer who spends far too much time obsessing over what keyboard and font to use.

krupan• 2 months ago

For a while I kept finding out co-workers were building their own CNC machines, and the mostly used them to make CNC machines components

CobrastanJorji3• 2 months ago

I myself am a 3D printer who mostly prints accessories for 3D printing.

infinet• 2 months ago

I guess I will setup something similar or more complex. But there are alternatives:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12114947

"George R.R. Martin Writes on a DOS-Based Word Processor From the 1980s". No internet, no multi tasking.

lproven8• 2 months ago

More less why I built this, TBH.

https://github.com/lproven/usb-dos

maleldil2• 2 months ago

That's doing wonders for his productivity.

dnnddidiej• 2 months ago

A good test of your focus on writing is if you can use a boring tool like Substack, Wordpress, Blogger or Github pages (vanilla out of the box ssg setup) and just write.

That said this one did write something. But I'd say for anyone else writr 10000+ words on whatever before a single word on your setup.

rendaw• 2 months ago

I'd agree, but in this case they were able to write a blog post that got (as of now) 300+ points and 200+ comments with the content of their work.

alexwwang5• 2 months ago

Just open a term, start opencode, and tell my idea to LLM and ask it to write a passage of given length and save it to a file for me. Then the review loop starts. This is the writing job in the new era.

geek_at• 2 months ago

honestly this explains so much about many blog posts or journalistic articles I read in the last year

kowbell2• 2 months ago

I'm really, really curious why though? I'm not gonna try to dig at you, I just don't understand and want to know.

Is your "writing job" one where the end goal is like short random articles on some giant aggregate, or something like instructional content for businesses or something? Where a human typing things was just a means to an end, rather than what I'd assume OP's doing where they're writing for their own joy and/or because people love their specific voice? Because that's the only way my brain can rationalize it right now.

qsort3• 2 months ago

Great to see Veronica at the top of HN. She's a great creator, highly recommend her content.

JKCalhoun• 2 months ago

(Music creator too, ha ha.)

iib• 2 months ago

If anyone wants to try this without the intricate setup, if you have a linux system, you most probably can just press Ctrl+Alt+F3 and drop into a tty console directly. To return, you have to press Ctrl+Alt+F1 or Ctrl+Alt+F2. You also have multiple consoles, up until F12 probably.

I used to use this a lot when trying for a less distracting desktop, just like in the original post.

SubiculumCode2• 2 months ago

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.

TeMPOraL2• 2 months ago

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.

spl757• 2 months ago

I'm a proverbial greybeard and Ctrl+Alt+F7 used to just be what you did to get back to your desktop GUI.

FWIW, right now I'm typing this from Ubuntu Studio 24.04 and it's Ctrl+Alt+F2 to get back to the GUI. Ctrl+Alt+F1 shows you the bootup output scroll, +F3 to +F6 will give you a login prompt to drop into a shell. +F7 to +F12 just give me a blinking cursor un the upper right corner of the display.

I'm kinda surprised only +F3 to +F6 give me a shell login. Three isn't that many.

Shellban3• 2 months ago

I even added this as an option in my Grub menu.

luqtas• 2 months ago

even worse! you can start a Emacs client evaluate (menu-bar-mode -1) and (tool-bar-mode -1) and put it on full screen

TiredOfLife4• 2 months ago

you missed the fbcon thing

tyleo• 2 months ago

I use the same Mac to write that I use for everything else. But I find it’s more useful to disconnect from multiple screens and just use the laptop on my desk if I need to focus.

Those idle screens taunt me with a desire to use them for Slack or Hacker News when I’m trying to work.

mateioo7• 2 months ago

This article reminded me of something I've been thinking a lot these past few months, that is having my computer split in 2 modes:

1. work, having everything available in a desktop OS

2. personal, a console-only mode with a few basic functionalities I consider not time wasting: ebook reader, weather forecast, next sport events, 1 TV show episode per day, calculator, calendar, timer, etc

Since I use the extremely configurable awesomewm window manager, this switch would not be hard to implement and have me locked (somehow) based on day of the week or time on work days.

LE: actually, the console-only mode would be more of a menu-only one with something like rofi desktop [1]. Something very minimal and easy to use.

[1] https://github.com/giomatfois62/rofi-desktop

sixtyj4• 2 months ago

I haven’t known awesomewm. Thumb up.

As I switch between Win and Linux, I have found FancyWM for win10/11 that should do the similar. (Ofc you’ve to use mouse in Windows.)

FrankRay78• 2 months ago

Anybody else wonder how the screenshots were taken?

ZPrimed• 2 months ago

I think Veronica setup an identical demo copy in a VM and thus could easily screenshot the VM.

eichin2• 2 months ago

In the associated video, she explains exactly that - a Debian Trixie VM specifically for screenshotting https://youtu.be/E7vFdy4BEAY?si=WVBxmCPLVEdRBbtU&t=114

btrettel• 2 months ago

I had a similar setup in 2023, but the computer was reformatted after I moved. I wrote a HN comment about the setup before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37792204

I liked it and intend to use a similar setup in the future. There were quite a few "rough edges", unfortunately. In retrospect, a tiling window manager would have been a better choice.

I found Midnight Command to be great for this, with its integrated file manager, file viewer (mcview), editor (mcedit), and diff (mcdiff).

I didn't realize how much I relied on a unified clipboard until I didn't have one any longer. mcedit's clipboard was a file (or one of them was?), so I had to adjust some workflows.

The biggest problem came from my need to view a lot of PDF files. I had a framebuffer PDF viewer that was pretty clunky. It did not work with tmux and PDF files could not be opened directly from Midnight Commander as I recall. This specifically is why I'm thinking about a tiling window manager as I won't have to pick a clunky PDF viewer and the remainder will just work.

kaashif5• 2 months ago

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.

nicbou• 2 months ago

Same. However, for a while, I did not need to work much, and indulging in such things was an absolute delight. It was entertainment, but it also benefited me when I actually worked.

cortesoft3• 2 months ago

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?

TeMPOraL2• 2 months ago

I built my whole career on focusing on the wrong thing. In fact, focusing on the right thing makes me slow down, struggle, and get bogged down with frustration. I still learn 10+x faster when focusing on the wrong thing, and after two decades of this, I now know I have to regularly focus on the wrong thing with passion - those are the moments I pick up knowledge and experience that, few months to years later, people pay me to apply to their problems.

komali23• 2 months ago

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.

akerl_2• 2 months ago

What a strangely hostile thing to say to somebody's earnest post about their setup.

altairprime2• 2 months ago

Flatly: “How dare you lovingly handcraft a bespoke wordworking tool when you could have written a short story instead! We hackers would never spend time improving our circumstances to create more efficient flow states going forward rather than just drearily producing output less efficiently!”

kaashif5• 2 months ago

Well if it's strangely hostile I'm sorry but "I need to focus on writing so I spent a few days stripping down a Linux distro" seems pretty disconnected.

I mean it's a fun project!

But it really reminds me of something I would do that isn't entirely positive.

crimsontech2• 2 months ago

I don't think it was meant to be hostile. It is a pattern I always find myself repeating personally. I think they just recognised it as something they do themselves.

If I feel like I have too many things to do, I can end up installing all sorts of todo list apps instead of doing the things. When I feel like a need a nap, I look up optimal nap times, end up reading stuff and then realising I missed the window I could have had a nap in.

I've set up vimwiki and loads of other note taking type apps (or knowledge management apps as they are often called now) and I export my notes from one system into another, and forget to use it.

worik• 2 months ago

Good idea

X-Windows and it's ilk are awesome software.

For a single purpose machine it is unnecessary

I've been doing the same thing in different domains

rpastuszak• 2 months ago

I’m working on one! It’s early stage, but it’s relatively low latency e paper writing tool with my writing tool Ensō.

I’m calling it Writer’s Block. (I love carpentry and want it to look a bit like a wooden pencil case.) the prototype will be a literal log of wood (guess the name). It makes sense because the larger form factor allows for faster prototyping!

elias1233• 2 months ago

Very interesting! But how do you display images?

em-bee6• 2 months ago

fbi - the framebuffer image viewer. various versions exist. there is also a webbrowser and a pdf viewer among other things. i figure the pdf viewer is especially handy for someone focused on writing. and the browser may be good enough to handle a blog...

UncleSlacky2• 2 months ago

Why not just use DOS? e.g.:

https://github.com/lproven/usb-dos

At least the laptops that can still run DOS natively tend to have fairly good keyboards...

dredmorbius4• 2 months ago

You'd have to find a suitable editor. For a long time I had a copy of Wordperfect 4.x which I'd fire up occasionally under either DOSEmu or FreeDOS. Among other disappointments:

- I've forgotten virtually all my WP muscle-memory. Vim is where it's at. (I was once quite proficient at WP, but the last time I used it significantly was well over 30 years ago.)

- I find DOS apps tend to play poorly with any screen resolution other than 80x24 or so. I prefer more information density, but even running a console (rather than a terminal app) the experience tends to be subpar.

That said, for someone with familiarity with the apps and not too picky about resolution, that's an option.

alexhans• 2 months ago

When I saw this post I immediately thought of WordPerfect.

It had such a pleasant interface for that time.

But yeah, one of the things made me go for vim over Emacs a long time ago was its relationship with touch typing and not leaving the home row with the vim modes.

Learn Vim script the hard way [1], even if you didn't end up writing any actual vim script, was a game changer in terms of understanding the semantics.

[1] https://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/ was

lproven8• 2 months ago

You'd have to find a suitable editor.

You didn't follow the link. You should have.

I built that USB-DOS tool and it contains a wide choice of word processors, from plain text editors with the WordPerfect command keys, to full-on professional tools, plus a choice of outliners and also a spreadsheet for the sort of writer who needs to model stuff -- like Andy Weir or John Barnes, to pick two I rather like.

TiredOfLife4• 2 months ago

Fonts, wifi

UncleSlacky2• 2 months ago

Fonts are generally included in DOS applications, but the point of a "writerdeck" is to be distraction-free, hence no need for wifi.

risingsubmarine• 2 months ago

Has me thinking about laser-focused task alternatives.

WorldDeck : 3D art / game development

GengoDeck : Japanese Immersion / Studying

TuneDeck : Making music.

SteamDeck : A deck for... oh I think this idea is taken.

Hmm. No i think I'll get back to working... for now.

gib444• 2 months ago

Can I tangent to some love for the Debian TUI installer? Just seeing it evokes such pleasing thoughts. I don't think it's changed a whole lot in at least 10 years, maybe more. I think it's pretty well designed in terms of UX.

I have never seen it crash or bug out.

Even the graphical version is excellent. They've resisted using a web view, thank god (giving you the side eye, Fedora)

A lot of respect and love for Debian!

ungreased0675• 2 months ago

I recently installed Alpine Linux as part of a side quest and was blown away by just how fast it was without running a GUI or loading up a bunch of background programs. It was so fast a little voice has been telling me my daily driver laptop should run a minimal Linux distribution like Alpine.

lproven8• 2 months ago

It's quite remarkable, isn't it?

It is how Linux used to be in the 1990s: tiny, simple, blindingly fast compared to the big lumbering commercial OSes...

... Which now are also Linux. Which is terribly terribly sad.

OriginalPenguin• 2 months ago

They weren’t blindingly fast then. The hardware was so much slower in the 90s. It’s difficult to remember just how slow a 5400rpm hard drive was.

richardlblair• 2 months ago

I find fhe discourse here hilarious. Haven't most of us built our skillsets and careers out of side quests?

There is so much I wouldn't know or understand if I didn't go down the odd rabit hole.

kaashif5• 2 months ago

I think going down side quests is good, that's how I learnt lots of what I know.

But if my goal was to run daily and my first step was to make an open source step tracker with a raspberry pi dock...

meribold• 2 months ago

Lots of comments are also massively overestimating the amount of time/effort that creating this setup required.

choilive2• 2 months ago

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).

teruakohatu• 2 months ago

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.

choilive2• 2 months ago

If you don't value your time sure. Pen and paper is also basically free and even simpler with no setup time..

caioricciuti• 2 months ago

I keep gravitating toward similar setups. Once you remove the option to fiddle with fonts and layouts, you're left with just the writing. Console-only Debian on an old laptop is about as distraction-free as it gets without going full typewriter.

rrvsh2• 2 months ago

The only thing holding me back from tty as desktop environment is terminal alt modes - i find it annoying when nvim leaves behind a ghost of itself

skydhash4• 2 months ago

Doesn’t tmux support alternate screen. You could run everything in a tmux session and get alternate screen that way.

altairprime2• 2 months ago

Gosh, this is everything I miss about my FreeBSD Vaio back in the day. Huh. Well. Thanks for the memories and heartily endorsing this based on past experience (before having a writing focus need, and so I’d never connected the dots)!

andai• 2 months ago

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 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.)

pickleballcourt• 2 months ago

Is this supposed to replicate the typewriter experience?

Eighth• 2 months ago

There's a lot of 'But what about' in the comments. I think it's a delightful setup. I love simplicity and tools that do one thing well.

deadbabe• 2 months ago

I think what would really make a nice writerdeck is an E-ink screen. Would be perfect for purely text based interface.

wolvoleo4• 2 months ago

Yes and you could sit outside in nature

desireco42• 2 months ago

Look, it does look like overkill but I totally understand you and where you are coming from...

I managed to publish my first book, second getting final review and third one is in editing... fully connected. AI came up with all the names for the characters, did a research on places and such. Huge help. I did check it all. For example a name AI claimed was French, totally was German and had to be replaced, but otherwise it is of huge help in writing if used correctly.

But here is a thing that made the most difference. Dictation. And not into dumb mac or phone transcriber. I use Typeless and used Superwhispt before, Typeless has amazing keyboard replacement and understand Serbian and transcribe it to English with minimal issues.

I dictate in my own Obsidian vault, to Inbox, which is then processed and sorted out by SidianSidekicks service (I am the founder). I look weird because I am talking to myself everywhere I go, but it is amazingly productive.

tekawade• 2 months ago

This is awesome and inspiring. I am almost always setup Linux as a server (command line only). Unless until I have need to have native gui. If needed ‘sshd’ to use from other machines.

Here are some more recommendations (not my repos): 1. helix-editor (rust based lightweight and fast) 2. Starship.sh (command line) 3. Nerd fonts (not sure how It will work only used with remote systems) 4. Zellij (cause it’s rust based not strong argument here) 5. Biased for ‘zsh’ too

bitmasher9• 2 months ago

I was really hoping to learn more about the actual writing process than someone’s Linux setup. It’s a bit too complicated for my taste, I can bang out about a thousand words an hour in a chrome tab, given a sufficient source of coffee and the opportunity to silence non-urgent notifications.

I’m specifically struggling with large project editing. I have multiple projects that are hundreds of pages long, but need much more editorial efforts before they see the light of day. Editing anything longer than 10 pages feels like pulling teeth, so I end up underpublished.

throw109204• 2 months ago

There's a pattern that I notice a lot on HN.

"To solve this problem, I engineered an entire system from scratch."

Response: "That's a cool solution. But, isn't it a lot more work than this straightforward solution?" (the user is right - the complicated solution is massively more work than the straightforward one)

Response: "Yes, but it's a cool project - it's OK to not be the most efficient all the time." (also right - there's nothing wrong with doing projects with zero utility just for the fun of it, and this one actually does have some use)

It seems like there's a bifurcation of expectations.

Some people want to do a project, and they take a thin justification as an excuse to do so.

Other people really do want to solve a problem, but they get mired in perfectionism and overengineering, or aren't even aware of the simpler solution.

Conflation between these two categories keeps many HN threads gainfully employed.

(worth noting that for people in the latter category, pointing out "there's this simpler solution" can be incredibly helpful, because they simply might not know that it exists, or maybe they need a little bit of pushing to realize that they're overengineering things and that they got stuck in a place that they don't actually want to be in. this has been me, many many times)

fcarraldo• 2 months ago

Forums are made up of many individual people who all have their own perspectives. It is not all black and white, zero sum, good or bad.

throw109204• 2 months ago

Right, I'm not saying any of those latter things. It's just interesting to note patterns, and sometimes people are actually in a local minimum that they appreciate being pushed out of.

simpaticoder• 2 months ago

You didn't describe, but rather demonstrated, another aspect of the pattern which is that someone inevitably "goes meta" and remarks on the pattern - and usually someone points out that it's "not black and white" and the sub-thread decays into muttering obscurity with no real conclusion or insight. Personally I've come to see this as a niche form of "exuberance of the young" which is itself wasteful in the strictest sense, but is more generously characterized as a side-effect of other, hopefully more important personal maturation effects.

jcelerier• 2 months ago

it's OK to not be the most efficient all the time

is it ? it's a non-negligible reason for the absolutely unsufferable technological world we are currently living in

throw109204• 2 months ago

Really? Do elaborate.

CobrastanJorji3• 2 months ago

It absolutely is wonderfully alright to not be the most efficient all the time. I'm going to use this opportunity to quote Kurt Vonnegut at length:

I work at home, and if I wanted to, I could have a computer right by my bed, and I’d never have to leave it. But I use a typewriter, and afterwards I mark up the pages with a pencil. Then I call up this woman named Carol out in Woodstock and say, “Are you still doing typing?” Sure she is, and her husband is trying to track bluebirds out there and not having much luck, and so we chitchat back and forth, and I say, “OK, I’ll send you the pages.”

Then I’m going down the steps, and my wife calls up, “Where are you going?” I say, “Well, I’m going to go buy an envelope.” And she says, “You’re not a poor man. Why don’t you buy a thousand envelopes? They’ll deliver them, and you can put them in a closet.” And I say, “Hush.” So I go down the steps here, and I go out to this newsstand across the street where they sell magazines and lottery tickets and stationery. I have to get in line because there are people buying candy and all that sort of thing, and I talk to them. The woman behind the counter has a jewel between her eyes, and when it’s my turn, I ask her if there have been any big winners lately. I get my envelope and seal it up and go to the postal convenience center down the block at the corner of 47th Street and 2nd Avenue, where I’m secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. I keep absolutely poker-faced; I never let her know how I feel about her. One time I had my pocket picked in there and got to meet a cop and tell him about it. Anyway, I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock. I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home. And I’ve had a hell of a good time. And I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.

keyle• 2 months ago

It's the natural flow of tech conversations. Like a splash, it follows with ripples, the sine wave of for-comments and against-comments, and eventually comes to an equilibrium.

troad• 2 months ago

It's interesting to me how few people seem willing to just turn off notifications.

I'm all on board with setting up a retro machine for fun, but if one wants to focus on writing, there are ways to achieve this that don't require the sacrifice of good font rendering, comfortable colours, etc.

The fact that the Music app notifies you of the new song is not some immovable law of nature...

tonyedgecombe• 2 months ago

That still leaves the browser a couple of keypresses away which is too close for many.

bitwize3• 2 months ago

Before dunking on this lady for rolling her own writerdeck Linux distro, consider that I see advertisements for rather weaksauce devices, often with tiny LCD or, if they're posh, e-paper screens and very limited functionality compared to something like vim, for between $500 and $1200 USD. For an electric typewriter whose entire value proposition could have been achieved with a DOS PC.

Veronica put a used laptop to work achieving much the same thing for next to nothing, except her time of course. It's not reverse-engineering an obscure Space Shuttle computer, but it's the kind of effort I think we want to reward on a site called Hacker News.

crionuke• 2 months ago

I have thought I need similar setup but for mobile to work on text notes, legacy iphone or something would be nice

LAC-Tech• 2 months ago

I've wanted to do this for general productivty; if I could find a good LLM to give me links I could forgo even a TUI web browser. perfect dev machine.

The default linux TTY is pretty barebones though. No unicode, and lots of TUI apps expect 256 colours. KMSCON looks like an interesting solution.

MomsAVoxell• 2 months ago

I have been writing for some time now, on a very large variety of devices, and my current go-to is an iPad and keyboard .. at various times the smart thingy (from Apple) .. but also often now lately with a Bluetooth logi .. just to give the joints a bit of variety as they get older and crankier ..

I do miss the old typewriter. Not so much the selectric era, but more the well-balanced instrumentation of a manual.

Still, there is a lot to be said for the amber glow of full-screened vim session on such a portable device.

The one thing I truly wish for, is a solar-powered writerdeck, i.e. 100% off grid, forever. Just like the good ol’ typewriter ..

rldjbpin2• 2 months ago

interesting choice to use syncthing instead of rsync, given the OP is already comfortable with it. equally curious to see why it was not even mentioned nor discussed for regular readers/viewers.

my main concern with the setup was with the additional config required to make sure sleep states and other hw annoyances are in check. but it does help to have a well-supported linux machine as a base!

kowbell2• 2 months ago

I install syncthing on ~all my devices and haven't yet touched rsync. Some reasons I prefer it:

1. It's automatic (sure, scripting regular rsync syncs probably isn't hard, but...)

2. It's p2p across all my devices (which from what I understand is not how rsync operates)

So as long as my laptop and my desktop are both turned on I can trust they're always fully up-to-sync with each other, and in my experience they always are.

rldjbpin2• 2 months ago

as a personal syncthing user, i get it. although its clients in non-linux os can be better, especially on ios.

on the other hand, the accompanying video did mention rsync and a future video on syncthing, which might shed some more light on this decision.

hambes• 2 months ago

I've always wanted to do this, but can't get over the linux tty only supporting 256 colors. If I could get that higher and maybe add unicode support, I'd love to go tty only.

SeattleAntifa• 2 months ago

No.

nottorp• 2 months ago

All it's missing is WordPerfect 5.1 in DosBox!

rav3ndust• 2 months ago

i saw this video the other day on youtube (veronica's yt channel is great if you haven't watched!), and cool to see other people doing it as well. it reminded me of a similar setup i have, dubbed 'protocol7', which is a tty-only setup tailored for this kind of thing and for use on servers/headless pi setups. i use it for writing, intentional reading/browsing via lynx, managing gemini capsules (and reading gemini capsules - thank you amfora!), and just all-round "cozy computing". tmux-heavy, and (to me) very comfortable to use.

my current 'protocol7' machine is my trusty old thinkpad x200. :)

jeffrallen• 2 months ago

Wonder if Lynx can connect to ChatGPT.

ewrgrghyeuhy• 2 months ago

fuzix (or serenityOS/Haiku)+mechanical or magnetic keyboard 60-80% but with home, arrow, ins, pgup-down del. And a week of working time on one charge

ksd482• 2 months ago

Nowhere it mentioned anything about saving the progress. Can someone comment on if there's a way to autosave the files on every keystroke?

linux2647• 2 months ago

Vim swap files (.swp) are periodically saved out to disk. In the event of a crash, reopening a file will present you with a screen asking if you want to recover the file. I doubt it’s character by character, but I’m sure vim has a setting to speed it up

SanjayMehta3• 2 months ago

TLDR: "I installed a text only Linux on a laptop"

cassidoo• 2 months ago

I also made a writerdeck! They are the best: https://cassidoo.co/post/micro-journal/

thewisenerd• 2 months ago

on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7vFdy4BEAY

not sure if i saw the link in the blog; but the youtube video attaches TFA as the companion blog post.

realaaa• 2 months ago

wow all that is music to my ears ! and yes, attention problem is too real these days, for most of us - thanks for sharing this !

Time to talk about my writerdeck

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