1. Star Trek Was From The Future! 2. Plaintext.
January 22, 2009
Via John Gruber (who I've now started following), I found waferbaby's The Setup on Steven Frank (a man I never knew by name, but I know of his company). I'm not going to post the whole thing, or even necessarily recommend reading it (unless you want to hear someone talk about their personal hardware and software), but I do want to highlight a few key phrases/concepts Mr. Frank mentions. First:
"My [computer] at home is my "master" computer for everything ... and I leave file and screen sharing so I can get to that [computer] from any other computer over the internet. The other two [computers] I keep only very sparsely populated, and pull files from my home [computer] over the net as needed. It's sort of like "cloud computing", but with my own personal cloud."
A few weeks ago, I was dreaming of having a similar setup, if only I could afford multiple computers. People talk about "cloud computing" a lot these days, often as if it is a new concept. While certain aspects are new (the web interface, I suppose), the concept is very old and harkens back to the era of the mainframe. And yet it IS the future. Take, for instance, Star Trek: The Next Generation (or DS9 or VOY, for that matter). These crews of the 24th century basically have a (voice-activated) server-and-terminal system... with the main computer, the computer access panels, and the little pad-like things they would work on. You could almost pull that off today, just so long as you don't let Verizon make the voice software. So, Steven Frank's computer setup is an early version of the Star Trek Enterprise's computer system.
Later in the waferbaby piece:
"I've found that I'm really averse to installing any software at all, because years of computing have taught me that proprietary data formats are fragile and succumb to time. So an application needs to prove itself extremely useful and extremely reliable to survive on my systems for long."
I'm right there with you, Steven. I periodically cleanse my computer of software that doesn't make the cut, and I make a point of having only 1 ideal version of any given type program. There's no need to install 3 sound editors, 5 programming IDEs, 4 professional graphics editors, and so on. Nor is there need to install 1 monster hybrid sound-editor/programming-IDE/professional-graphics-editor/do-everything program. Keep only the best, and keep only what you use*. The more software you have installed, the more data formats you have to choose from, and the more ways to manipulate those data formats you have to choose from.
And that idea led right into this next quote:
"As much as possible, I try to keep my data in "lowest common denominator" formats (like plain text) that can follow me anywhere without hassle."
To quote Omar: "Indeed." My adherence to this code may have been hastened by my year-or-so of using Linux, but I've been keeping notes and writing drafts of papers in simple text files for my entire computing life (OK, maybe not elementary school when I didn't know how to use anything except word processors). Besides "following me anywhere" (a.k.a. data portability), plaintext is also great for focusing you attention on the text itself. No fiddling with fonts and typography, no fiddling with colors or sizes, barely any fiddling with layout, no hyperlinking... Break up what you do. Write your text as text, then convert it into a formatted document, be it HTML or MS Word or OpenOffice.org Writer or LaTeX.
(Oh, and to bring it all back to John Gruber, I was very glad to discover Markdown, a simple method of formatting a text file so that it is easily converted into richly-formatted texts (primarily HTML). The beauty of this particular markup method is that it is incredibly simple, incredibly transparent, and to a large extent I had already been formatting my plaintext in its syntax.)
* I used to think of this as "computer minimalism" but perhaps it's more akin to "use every part of the buffalo" and "only take as much as you need."
Posts
January 22, 2009 at 6:30 PM
And yes, I know that many have spoke of these things. Frank is no originator, in this sense, however I think he put it succinctly and practically.
January 23, 2009 at 10:03 AM
I have been mucking around with my Samba on my old laptop (+ext HD), which is running Ubuntu (8.10). I thought of using NFS or even the ridiculously underdocumented AFS, but I think Samba is the best choice for having the ability to let a windows dude connect to it. You don't need to afford another computer, you just need to get some junky computer someone is getting rid of, get Linux on it, get Samba on it, and then attach external HDs to it.
Also, Latex is pure text, so are HTML, Word, OpenOffice, etc. I think you should draw a difference between mark-up and encoding. Often good to not have everything in proprietary encoding; but here's nothing wrong with having things in mark-up languages.
Speaking of computers --- you seen that thing about building your own multi-touch pad with a cardboard box, a webcam, and the touchlib?
January 23, 2009 at 12:49 PM
You make some good points, Dan. I'd say that LaTeX and HTML are pure text, but not plain text. Word and OpenOffice, however, are different beasts. Try opening one of those up in vim or emacs.
I've been on the hunt for a trash computer for a while for exactly the reason you mention, but every computer I've come across here has been stripped to hell. I supposed I should go hunting 'round the Columbia area near the end of the semesters, instead.
I have seen that cheap multitouch thing, but I don't know... I'm just not all that into multitouch stuff, I guess. I do think it's interesting, and could be useful, but it just doesn't seem useful to me, personally. Have you any plans for what you'd do with your own multitouch table?
January 25, 2009 at 2:59 AM
Nice post, Joe. I found this really fascinating, never really having heard of any of these apparently very simple and time worn concepts before. Tell me more of this Picard-based future of computing.
I am a terrible software gatherer, and never delete those that I thought would be a good idea but never use (ahh, Quicksilver).
Prepare for a really stupid question: what program do you use to write your plain text? Should I be doing all of my typing in Dashboard's little memo pad? Thanks!
January 25, 2009 at 3:22 AM
Good to know that at least two (2) people now have read what might be by longest post. (It is at least my longest post w/o pictures.)
Ryan, I personally use Vim (and, to a lesser extent, MacVim). I passionately love Vim. But BE WARNED: it's quite like how you described Dwarf Fortress to me... you need to read about how to use it first or else you'll be lost. And even then, you'll be lost for a while, but eventually you'll get the hang of it, if you want to.
If you don't really want to attempt learning that (and I wouldn't blame you, as it took me 6+ years to build up the courage to jump into that world), you can't go wrong with simply using OSX's built-in TextEdit and just be sure it's set to plain text instead of rich text.
Not sure if you were joking, but in case not, I'd recommend avoiding dashboard's memo pad, unless you want exactly that: the digital equivalent of a post-it note. Perfect for somethings, but not for everything.
January 25, 2009 at 6:43 AM
I read all the posts, dude. I have to say I prefer the ones with text over the ones with photos.
The home network plan is coming along, but not actually working yet. I have Samba installed, and I saw one shared directory for like 5 minutes from my mac, but never at all from the other Ubuntu laptop in my house. And as soon as I tried to share the external harddrive (I want to just leave my old Ubuntu laptop next to the router as a home server for the ext HD) everything disappeared. If I figure it out, I'll let you know how. I'm waiting for the Ubuntu Home Server project to finally be completed.
As for the touch pad --- well, no plans. My computer already has it's own multi-touch pad; it's more that my coworker wants to try it and we thought it'd be fun to build. Plus it couldn't hurt to try programming in C for a mac program with the library.
reminds me: My dream is that laptops finally do away with the keyboard and replace it with a multi-touch display (like the whole bottom part of the laptop) so that you can make your own keyboard mappings, or have touch-toolbars for programs. Awesome, right?
January 25, 2009 at 12:07 PM
Multi-touch display as laptop keyboard... wow. Yeah, awesome. Reminds me of the Nintendo DS, except way awesomer.
And, Dan, I feel your networking pain. I've had much tribulation from Linux networking using various distributions. It can be tricky and finicky. Then again, sometimes it's wonderful. And its nothing like Windows networking, at least through XP (I claim Vista ignorance). Windows networking never ceases to make me want to kill.
Btw, I fell in love with Bonjour the other day when I realized that the only problem I was having was assuming it was going to be harder to work with. I still haven't tried working with Bonjour on any Linux platforms yet, though.
January 25, 2009 at 1:32 PM
Bonjour is always there with those full linux distros like Ubuntu... It's called Avahi. So I take it you've set up a Linux file sharing small network? I need HELP. I wrestled with it again today after my last comment. Spent like two hours setting up netatalk, because Samba didn't seem to work. Got Avahi broadcasting, and now my Ubuntu machine is detected by Bonjour and shows up on the Mac, but still having the same problem connecting as I did with Samba. DAMN.
January 25, 2009 at 1:39 PM
Also... I have no undying love for Ubuntu, so I'm open to suggestions for another flavor that might be easier to work with on this networking issue.
January 25, 2009 at 2:00 PM
Well, unfortunately, the last time I tried it, I had no good success. I ended up just FTPing. Once, long ago, I had some success with Knoppix, but that was long ago, and it was only between 2 computers, and I had to make compromises.