!My horseman hat was hung here
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f6k's lair in the digital meadow
29 July 2022 @ 09:40 UTC
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written on x270 with jmacs on otaku.ssh.org
on the living room table as Itz bath our toddler
---
After my night shift, I came back home but I didn't
went to sleep since I needed to do important stuff in
the morning. First, I went to buy two vaccines for
the baby; then I had to write a mail and send it to
my manager about some overtime hours made this month
that were not taken into account yet; and, last, I
made that phone call mentioned in my previous note to
the college's hotline so they can debug my problem
with the registration process for law school.
All done. It's now 10:43 am. And since we have an
appointment at the nursery at 1pm and then at the
pediatrician at 3pm for vaccinations, I avoid going
to bed. To pass the time, and to help keep me awake,
I'm taking a walk in the large digital meadow while
mom and baby have a bath. I stopped by agk's gopher
hole in SDF's gopher.club.
I've read with attention her Advice to expecting mom
(published on July, the 7th). This is the second
time I'm reading it. I'm no mom but a dad, either
way it is full of useful tips that are always good to
keep in mind. In addition, I had never heard of the
benefits of catnip tea, nor my wife; thank you Anna
for that! We will surely try it at home.
Then I went through her archives and found her posts
about her Pinebook Pro wrote in May and October 21
where she explains how she uses her (then) new
laptop. She mentionned it in an old discussion on
SDF's bboard(1) (see below), and that's why I
launched lynx(1) to browse Gopher, ending up in her
online diary.
* * *
agk inspired me (again!) to do something similar.
And to honor the afflatus she brought in spite of
herself, I'm using her textfile decorum and current
54 columns right margin (yes, sorry for not telling
earlier; if you're reading this file, Anna, I hope
you didn't just think I was shamelessly ripping off
your style---cuz I'm not; rather please see it as a
kind of tribute; a homage, if you may; pinky swear).
Also, I will try to have her conciseness despite my
tendency to ramble (it's already off to a bad start,
have you noticed too? Well, keep in mind I'm quite
exhausted for lack of sleep at this point).
Structure and furniture
-----------------------
I have a second hand reconditioned Thinkpad X270
bought from an IT broker for about 200 euros.
QuadCore i5-6300U CPU @ 2.40GHz, ~250Go NVMe drive,
and 8 GB RAM. It's the most powerfull machine I've
ever had. The screen is 12,5" with a huge 1366x768
resolution (I mean huge for me, and compared to what
I am normally used to and had before).
It runs Debian stable even though I much prefer
Slackware (but I had to make the installation of the
system just before our newborn came to life four
months and a half ago (I mean, I had no time to make
a nice post-install configuration like Slackware
deserves it, so I went for the easiest (GODS! Will
you stop with the parenthesis, f6k?! We said: no
ramblings!))).
Machine and system are both robust and reliable. The
OS is lightweight and configured in such a way that
it does not pump too much on the batteries. Yes,
plural: I am fortunate to have two of them, including
one internal, which leaves me with many hours to
spare (I have not yet managed to drain them both
completely in one day of work on batteries!).
Everyday environment
--------------------
As a window manager, I've recently switched to i3(1).
I was using OpenBSD's cwm(1). I like the latter but
I'm happy to come back to a tiled window manager.
I've modified a little the default keystrokes to
change the focus ($mod+vi-keys) and configured some
of the extra FnKeys.
I'm using conky(1) to display various information on
the bottom right of the screen (hour, current date,
load average, temperature, batteries status (only
when not on AC), CPU heat (if it's too high), fan (if
it's too fast), Wi-Fi (if connected), and VPN (if
connected)). I'm using a JSON text configuration for
a better integration with i3bar (I also tuned the
color rendering according to the default i3 theme, so
everything match and appears as a whole).
I didn't want to use a third-party launcher. And I
found that I can launch apps directly from i3 thanks
to "modes". I use something like this:
> grep -A6 Apps ~/.i3/config
set $app_launcher Apps: [f]irefox [z]zz
bindsym oe mode "$app_launcher"
mode "app_launcher" {
bindsym f exec firefox-esr; mode "default"
bindsym z exec systemctl suspend; mode "default"
bindsym Escape mode "default"
}
So each time I press "²" on my French keyboard (just
above the tab key), I have a nice bar showing me a
menu next to the desktop indicators. As it happens,
when I press "f", it launches Firefox and the bar
disappears by itself (thanks to command chaining).
I also like that i3 allows me to load predefine
layout for the windows. Indeed, I always sort my
windows the same way. I have four xterm(1) combined
with tmux(1) on desktop 1, ordered like this:
+------------------+------------------+
| | |
| 1 | |
| | |
+------------------+ |
| | |
| | 3 |
| | |
| 2 | |
| | |
| +------------------+
| | 4 |
+------------------+------------------+
You should know that XTerm 1, 2 and 3 have the same
tmux session ("tmux new -t <target-client>") so I can
copy/paste easily from window to window without using
the mouse (prefix-key+] and +[). Above all, It
allows me to reshape the content of the terminals
without having to actually move the windows (does it
make sens explained like this?). XTerm 2 and 3 are
my main work spaces, i.e. where my active cursor is
most often, with priority given to XTerm 3. XTerm 4
is usually used to launch mplayer(1), mpg123(1),
moc(1), zathura(1), htop(1), or any quick command.
Textual screenshot
------------------
Right now, in XTerm 1 I'm connected to alt.org's
NetHack server from which I look with a distracted
eye Doy playing a game (she/he's currently solving
the Sokoban in dungeon level 5).
In XTerm 2, I have less(1) displaying my config file
for i3---so I could make the copy/paste above.
In XTerm 3, I'm connected to SDF where I have
jmacs(1) open to write this text file, within an
other tmux session hosted on SDF. In this tmux, I
also have an other pane with irssi(1) running (idling
in #helpdesk, #sdf and #anonradio on irc.sdf.org,
among with other channels on irc.libera.chat),
and a third with bboard(1) open on the "Desktop
Environment / Window Manager" discussion on UNIX
board.
Finally in XTerm 4, mpg123 is playing the aNONradio
stream. World News just started (it is now 12:01 pm
in France (and yes, it's been more than an hour I'm
writing this but I had to take breaks to take care of
the baby (absolutely, the bath did him good, thank
you very much for asking; and he's now eating with
mommy... (Well, actually, mommy is eating while he
looks at her with wonder, even if I mostly think he's
just waiting for her to breastfeed him (Ah no! He
was waiting for her to give him banana with a little
spoon (What a funny face he makes when the banana
arrives in his mouth; he really seems to like
it!)))))). (OH GODS! Help! The ramblings went
quite bad this time!).
Concerning other virtual desktops, the second one is
exclusively dedicated to Mozilla Firefox, while third
is for Zathura (which I use to read PDFs and CBZ).
Desktop 4 is reserved for graphical video games. It
should be noted that I run MPlayer in floating mode,
mostly on desktop 1.
* * *
To conclude, I will add that I do not use a file
manager---like nnn, Midnight Commander, nor things
like fzf. I am satisfied with what is offered by
coreutils, bsdutils and bsdextrautils (Debian package
names certified). And I think it's useless now to
say that I spend most of my computing time in a
terminal.
Well, it's almost time for our baby appointments.
I'll discuss daily life applications maybe another
day. In the meantime, take care. :)