
The Setup: Mike Fogus - lispython
http://mike.fogus.usesthis.com/
======
telemachos
I love that he talks about writing with pens and paper. Too many people
overlook how useful this can be, I think.

When I was writing my dissertation, I followed this cycle:

\+ Morning: Write new material, always by hand on legal pads, with the same
pen (a relatively heavy, but thin Lamy ballpoint - good balance and weight,
fine but clear ink, never clogged). _Edit_ : I still have a callous on my
finger from those two years of writing.

\+ Lunch + shoot pool for a few hours (no books, clear head)

\+ Afternoon: Type up what I hand wrote in the morning, edit old pages (on a
screen or from print outs, that would vary) and take notes on articles and
books.

Having time to think is what makes writing by hand so useful I think. It's
like the (apocryphal?) Truman Capote response when he heard about Kerouac's
automatic writing style: "That's not writing. It's typing." Too much of what
we do is just typing rapidly, without thought.

Maybe more disciplined people can work slowly enough at a keyboard, but I find
it difficult still. When I really want to think about something, I still start
with paper.

~~~
mwcampbell
To counterbalance this budding glorification of handwriting, I'll reiterate
here the drawbacks of handwritten text which have more to do with the results
than the process:

1\. It inevitably occupies physical space for as long as it exists.

2\. It is trapped in a format that cannot be (reliably) converted to
electronic text.

3\. As a corollary, it is not searchable by machine, so I'd argue it's not
quickly searchable on any large scale.

4\. As another corollary, it cannot be made accessible to people who can't
read written text (e.g. visually impaired people), at least not without the
manual effort of retyping it.

If you're writing just to capture your own thoughts, and the only intended
reader is you, and you have the space for it, I suppose I can't object to it
without getting into a discussion about individualism versus collectivism. But
handwriting has absolutely no attractions for me.

~~~
telemachos
Unlike fogus, I _am_ trying to glorify writing by hand _in some contexts_ at
least. (The proviso is important: I don't think that writing by hand is always
better.)

I believe that writing by hand helps me to think better and write better,
precisely because it's slower. (There's probably also something about me
liking the specific physical feedback, but I would be the first to admit
that's probably idiosyncratic and learned rather than universal.)

As for all the virtues of typed text that you mention, I agree. If you look at
my process from above, I typed up what I had handwritten earlier. But even
though this means some obvious duplication of effort, the net outcome was
worth it for me (and still is).

No doubt people vary and all that, but I think writing by hand is vastly
underrated nowadays. I stand by that.

~~~
tincholio
Having been working at improving my penmanship over the last few months, I've
found that writing by hand can be a very relaxing activity as well. That's a
bonus, for me. (plus, I now get complimented on my nice handwriting quite
often!)

------
jgrahamc
Whenever I read one of these I keep wanting them to do Patrick Bateman. These
descriptions of products that people use give me the creeps (on occasion).

~~~
mhd
I generally like to hear how people work, but it gets a bit boring if it's all
web developers & TED circuit guys, where it all comes down to "list of apple
devices + GTD apps". I would love to _see_ the setup of some people. A few
screenshots would be nice, but a short screencast would be even better. Even
if it's all pretty standard (e.g. Eclipse + Chrome, Sublime + Safari, Blender
+ XCode), I think one could learn a few things here and then how other people
hop around between applications and accomplish tasks.

At least I think it would be interesting, it might also just lead to me
freaking about because someone is _doing it wrong_ (As Sartre said, hell is
seeing other people google).

~~~
malandrew
I think it would be cool to watch videos of people doing the work we respect
them for. The same way that Notch occasionally posts of video of him hacking
for many hours straight.

~~~
keithpeter
That would be interesting from a UI design point of view. Bo Staake springs to
mind

<http://youtu.be/S7qUKv7XVx4>

------
pqs
Fogus, you say that you use an iPad when you are on the move. Do you edit your
.org files with the iPad? If yes, how do you do it? On a virtual server with a
ssh client?

I organize my whole life with Org-mode. I use it as a todo list, project
management tool and agenda. I also use it to write documents and scientific
papers and presentations, which I export to .tex.

Not being able to edit my agenda from an iPad is really what prevents me to
buy one (I would probably also buy a bluetooth keyboard).

There is mobileorg, but I think it is not maintained any more, at least the
iOS version. I could also ssh to a virtual server, but I'm not comfortable
having all my agenda files on such a machine, because of security and privacy
concerns.

~~~
boothead
I used iwriter (which is lovely) to bang out some text on my iPad and save it
to .txt files on Dropbox. I post processed into org-mode in emacs afterwards.
iWriter won't recognise the .org suffix by default, but that didn't matter to
me because the iPad keyboard is useless for writing #* and other characters -
WMMV if you have an external keyboard I guess. The nice thing is that all of
my book related .org files also live in Dropbox as does the output pdf so I
can read the output on the train too.

~~~
pqs
Yes. I think this is the most reasonable option.

I could also automatically export my agenda to a pdf, which I could read, but
not modify, on the iPad, using Dropbox.

Then, I should post-process everything to update my org-mode files.

The other option would be to buy a Windows 8 tablet (like the ThinkPad Helix),
which can run Emacs. But Windows ... that would be a sacrifice ;-)

------
fogus
The Mont Blanc pen "hack" mentioned in the interview is from
[http://www.instructables.com/id/Save-$200-in-2-minutes-
and-h...](http://www.instructables.com/id/Save-$200-in-2-minutes-and-have-the-
worlds-best-wr/)

~~~
calibraxis
There's a video where fine sandpaper's used.
(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHj_AH1Fp5A>) Said that the Mont Blanc
cartridge even wiggles less than Pilot's own cartridge.

What is the advantage of Mont Blanc? G2 ink smears easily on the Moleskine, so
I found them unusable together. (Not that I can justify to myself the premium
for Moleskine, but I did buy one once. :) How does Mont Blanc ink fare?

~~~
fogus
The Mont Blanc ink seems to dry very quickly. I've never had an issue with
smearing, but then again I use a larger notebook and am right-handed.

------
dreen
It would be cool too see some pictures of this "20 computer lab". Its rather
dry to read the post with just links to things I could Google if I wanted to
find out what they are. Otherwise it was an interesting read.

------
boothead
Org mode for writing books... I've started writing a book in org-mode. The
writing is all fine, but the exporting is a bit of a pain! Anyone else doing
this and have any tips on pdf export from org?

 _edit_ grammar

~~~
jfb
org -> LaTeX? That's how I generate docs at work.

~~~
boothead
Yeah I am doing it with LaTeX, but it was a shock to the system how much
actual LaTeX I had to mess with to make it work (and not look butt ugly) and I
wondered if anyone had a more streamlined workflow (or better tools.)

~~~
tincholio
I made a simple elisp snippet to insert a bunch of LaTeX headers for the stuff
I use (including my own LaTeX packages), and found that it simplifies the work
quite a bit.

~~~
boothead
I ended up making my own package (which I stole from sphinx) and including it
so I can keep all of my style separate and pick and choose what other stuff I
use - like minted for example.

I've found it a bit of a mixed bag though - setting up minted in one of me .el
files and some of it's styling in my .sty file. Not sure if I'm really doing
it right, but the output looks OK for now and I assume it will be much easier
to tweak it in future.

------
Kototama
So the M-keyboard does not rust?

I like the dishwasher idea but I have neither a M-keyboard nor a dishwasher
;-)

~~~
fogus
It appears not too, but I've not opened it up. In any case the keys function
as well as the day I got it (and it was probably 10 years old then).

~~~
agscala
Cool advice, I'm gonna try tossing my Model M in the dishwasher this weekend.

Also I totally get your Model M love, I think it'll always be my preferred
keyboard. What a great piece of hardware.

~~~
wiredfool
I've opened mine up, (M13s) and there's enough electronics in it that I didn't
want to put in the dishwasher.

I need to debug the trackpoint on one of them (it's simply not working, might
be the cable, might be the driver circuit) and the ujm keys on the other one.
I found washing the switches with alcohol worked for a while, but I'm still
getting miskeys on m j and u, where m -> m, u->ui, and j->jk.

------
lucb1e
His hardware needs are pretty spartan, but he needs: an iphone, PDA, laptop
with an ssd, computer, usbsticks, a kindle and an ipad. I guess I don't want
to know what non-spartan is. Or was this some obscure form of sarcasm?

~~~
fogus
It was wry I suppose, but I think I didn't explain myself very well in the
interview. I tried to convey that I'm trying to move towards a more Spartan
arrangement. I don't think I mentioned USB sticks, but in any case I no longer
use them because of Dropbox. Likewise, I no longer need a PDA because my
iPhone/iPad cover the old tasks. Also, I no longer need a computer because
Laptop, etc. The point is that I'm less reliant on multiple devices and
changing my habits to need even less.

~~~
lucb1e
I misremembered, I meant:

> various portable drives

~~~
fogus
The operative word in that quote is "had". As I mentioned, I'm trying to slim
down so to speak.

------
gyepi
I always enjoy finding out how others work. Mostly for curiosity, but also to
glean new methods and habits I could adapt for myself. I particularly enjoyed
this one because fogus seems to share my habits of using a pen/pencil as a
thinking tool, thinking hard before jumping into a problem and using a Model M
keyboard.

------
buzzkillr2
Fantastic read fogus!

I love discovering gems thru reading The Setup

~~~
waferbaby
Yay! That's awesome.

