Saturday 20 July 2024


Post challenge thoughts
=======================

We slept a night after the last day of the Old Computer Challenge, and
things begin to sink in.

Any old laptop will suffice
---------------------------
During the challenge we have seen people using all kind of hardware.
Although I am not that adventurous, one thing that stands out to me,
is that any old laptop will suffice.

I am back to my old trusty X201, and I love this machine.

With love comes worries, and sometimes I have been thinking about
the fragility and what to do, in case the X201 gets broken or is
otherwise lost.

Not anymore.

I know now, that in case of such mishap, any old laptop will do. This
morning I have been looking at some websites of sellers of
'refurbished laptops'. Old laptops are available for a small amount of
money, some even more powerful than this X201. Those websites were of
commercial refurbished laptop sellers. Cut out those middle man, and
old laptops may even be obtained at lower prices.

Of course, those laptops will lack the great keyboard and the
TrackPoint that make classic ThinKpads so desirable. But they
can be used, and with a BSD on it, they will be powerful enough.

Gemini aggregator
-----------------
During the challenge I came to the conclusion I should not only focus
on Gopher and navigate the Gemini space more.

Today I discovered `Cosmos' [3], which advertises itself as
"a Geminispace Super-Aggregator that collects posts from various other
aggregators". Which sounds promising.

I don't know if it will lead me to more capsules next to Antenna, but,
as always, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

I added Cosmos to my jump list.

Just basic buffer switching in Emacs
------------------------------------
Having used Emacs in the console for a week, changed my view on using
tabs.

I have been using tabs in Emacs for some time. You can think of tabs
as separate frames, but than combined in a single frame.

It sounds more complex than it is, just issue `C-x t 2' to open a new
tab. Within this tab you can split the display at your liking,
horizontally or vertically, and open any buffer in the thus created
windows. Switch to another tab with 'C-x t o', and there again split
the window in any way you like, and open any buffer into any window.
Switch back to the previous tab, and you find everything as you have
left it there.

Switching tabs can be done very convenient with C-TAB, which is much
nicer to type than `C-x t o'.

Unfortunately, when using Emacs in the console/terminal, C-TAB does
not work.

During the challenge I discovered that using tabs as much as I used to
do, is not really needed, and just using the simple functionality of
switching buffers in the current window is often enough.

When the number of buffers gets big, there is always ibuffer, making
selecting buffers and killing buffers as easy as using Dired.

Emacs on the console is still an option
---------------------------------------
"but she is a girl" posted a very interesting article on their blog [1].

It is about using `devil mode' on Emacs [2], written by Susam.

This mode allows you to use the comma key in Emacs commands to
replace the control key. De mode is clever enough to let you type
a comma when needed, so nothing is lost.

To me, this sounds like a very promising solution to keep on working
without X.

I have to reschedule due to a change of plans and the fact that I have
to write two 1,800 words articles, so playing with Devil mode has to
wait a bit. But I am looking forward to it :)


[1]: https://www.rousette.org.uk/archives/devilish-fun-with-a-modeless-modal-editor/
[2]: ]https://susam.github.io/devil/
[3]: gemini://skyjake.fi/~Cosmos/view.gmi


Last edited: $Date: 2024/07/20 16:02:46 $