
Unix is digital clay - Matt Might - g3orge
http://matt.might.usesthis.com/
======
agumonkey
<pre> When I was young, I dreamed about building a “nerd cave” full of fast
hardware, big monitors, sleek software and cool gadgets.

I see now that technology can only nip at the margins of happiness (...)
</pre>

love his conclusion

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chriseidhof
"I can’t afford time off work to exercise"

This sounds quite scary to me. I would think that exercise is not something
that goes at the expense of working, it might even increase productivity. Even
if it's long walks outside. However, I don't have any references on this
except for my very limited personal experience.

~~~
nemoniac
Read a little further. He has a special needs kid. I don't know how demanding
that is for him but I do know that getting the worklife/homelife balance right
_and_ finding time to exercise can be quite a challenge even with regular
kids.

And btw, I've read his blog for some time now. While I don't make all the same
personal choices as he does when it comes to getting things done, I've found
his reasoning-from-principles approach to it very helpful.

------
akg
I agree about the point regarding tile based window managers. Few others come
close to maximizing productivity of windowed apps; but OSX's various other
productivity enhancing features make it not worthwhile to switch back.

Of course tools (hardware and software) can only take you so far. I find that
most productivity comes from being surrounded by sharp hard-working people
trying to push the envelope. Working with hard-working people creates a cyclic
motivational cycle, all pushing each other to be more productive.

~~~
dredmorbius
I've given tiling WMs a shot from time to time.

I keep returning to WindowMaker. Steve Jobs screwed up aqua, but this on (WM
is based on NeXTstep) is pretty close to perfection.

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tuacker
Again and again when I visit linked product sites I'm greeted with pages like
this[1]. Even though the link in the article has a country specified in the
URL. After selecting the location I'm not forwarded to the requested product
page. In this example I got redirected to some ad with Jennifer Lopez[2]. I
can't even select US as region, it just sends me back to the localeselector.

Stop this.

[1] <http://www.harmankardon.com/pages/localeselector.aspx> [2]
[http://at.harmankardon.com/jennifer-lopez-and-harman-
kardon-...](http://at.harmankardon.com/jennifer-lopez-and-harman-kardon-
at.html) (I suspect this link won't work)

Edit: This is hilarious. The Kensington remote link opens the product page and
then overlays a country selection. Selecting my country redirects me to the
homepage in my language. At least I can close the selection window and stay on
the product page.

~~~
wazoox
Thank you for mentioning this,it really drove me mad after a couple of tries;
I swear that I'll never return to harman kardon website, and won't buy their
products, ever. May their webmasters die a slow, painful death. So much anti-
usability deserves it.

------
judofyr
> To make up some more, I pin applications to one of six desktops: (1)
> terminal and text-editing; (2) real-time communication; (3) browsing; (4)
> organization and planning; (5) reading; and (6) media and games. Each
> desktop captures one frame of mind.

I think it's interesting to see that so many uses application-specific
desktops. I've always used project-specific desktops: one desktop for random
stuff (Twitter, browsing, terminal for quick stuff), one for communication
(because no IM app is fine-grained enough for my case) and the rest for
projects. Nearly all of the project desktops have a terminal and a separate
Chrome window.

~~~
zem
i've settled on a two-monitor, three desktop setup. one monitor has a
maximised terminator window, which i use to manage my xterms (i find it
handier than letting xmonad handle individual xterms, because terminator
allows for both splits and tabs). the other monitor alternates between office
browser and personal browser. i would normally have had an im window too, but
i decided to give not signing into personal im at work a try when i started my
new job (july), and so far it's actually worked out very well. my friends know
that i check email constantly, so if they need to get my attention they can do
that, or sms if its urgent.

temporary things (like launching openoffice or reading a pdf in fullscreen)
happen in a fourth desktop, and get closed when i'm done with them.

------
icebraining
_You will find 85 Watt MagSafe laptop power adapters (sometime two) pre-
installed everywhere we frequent in my house: the couch (x 2), the kitchen
desk, the home office (x 2), the rocking chair and the bed._

How are current power adapters in terms of energy wasted when not being used,
but connected to the plug? I use to keep them all unplugged because I remember
they used to waste a lot of watt-hours doing nothing.

~~~
runjake
I'll plug mine into a Kill-A-Watt and let you know tomorrow.

~~~
Nick_C
How did you go?

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simonista
Matt, for irc you should check out Limechat. I just switched from Colloquy and
am loving to so far. I set it up with the three panel view, and was at first
confused about the lower window (which is like a "everything you can't see in
the main room window" view), but i've found myself using it a lot just to
glance at conversations in other rooms.

~~~
mattmight
You're so right.

That lower window is a great idea!

Upgraded.

------
tl
One thing that I'm trying to figure out: if you block all potential
"timewasting sites" and only get your information from 1-2 hard news sources,
where do you learn about the existence of the tools listed? If you rely on
being around "sharp colleagues" don't you have a tragedy of the commons
problem when everyone starts doing this?

~~~
chriseidhof
Yes, but not everyone will do this. I hardly read any newspapers and try to
avoid news sites, but if something's really interesting my friends will bring
it up. For now, this strategy works just fine.

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g3orge
This is the "12 resolutions for programmers" guy.

~~~
silentbicycle
There's a lot of other good content on his site.

~~~
g3orge
I know. I already subscribed to the feed.

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wyclif
This is going to sound n00bish, but why doesn't he just backup to the cloud
instead of dealing with all the external HDDs?

~~~
icebraining
Price, maybe? He had a 2TB Time Capsule; the same storage space on S3 would
cost $265/month, _excluding_ traffic (that's $.12 more per GB downloaded). Not
to mention that restores would be much slower.

I don't know about you, but I know I'd rather use those $3200/year on other
stuff and just get a decent NAS.

~~~
crymer11
Crashplan and backblaze both offer unlimited storage for way cheaper (roughly
$260 dollars a month cheaper). Don't get me wrong - I'm all for onsite
backups, especially for speed of recovery, but there are realistic &
affordable options for cloud-based storage.

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jcfrei
having just browsed through the post - is there a recommendable tiling window
manager for windows (7)?

~~~
headbiznatch
Try Divvy - <http://mizage.com/#windivvy>

It may not qualify as a "tiling window manager" depending on what you think
that should include, but it's excellent for arranging windows.

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philsheard
I've got a very similar setup to Matt. No Macbook Air though, best get
shopping :)

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lol_hn
oh god, not another of these masturbatory articles

~~~
icebraining
Hi and welcome. Please read the HN guidelines on what to post:
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

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lewispb
How come he has two brothers and three sisters-in-law?

~~~
mattmight
I have two brothers. My wife has three sisters.

