My current tech setup
Wed, 6 Dec 2023
Technology, Travel
=====================

Over the period that this blog has been offline, my tech setup
has changed a lot. The devices I use, the software that runs on
them, and the interpretation of my personal technology guidelines
has all changed. What I think is very interesting to observe in
this change is that my background ideas have stayed consistent,
even though there are few similarities observable at first glance
between by tech now and December of last year.

Let me first outline my principles for using technology.
Electronics and I have a love-hate relationship, and we are only
staying together for the kids (id est: because you cannot
navigate modern society without electronics). My principles allow
me to use tech in such a way that I not tempted to go
full-Unabomber more than once a month (the live-in-the-woods
type, not the letterbomb type). So, without further ado, here are
my principles:

    - The tech I use works for me, I don't work for it
    - Portability is key
    - Environmental concerns trump usability
    - Embrace digital minimalism

Now, I could go over every point in this list and explain exactly
what I mean by it, but I think it is more interesting to display
my application of these principles by looking at my old setup,
and by new one. Both of these setups adhere to the principles,
though to varying degrees, and with different interpretations.

The old setup
-------------

My old setup contained the following devices:
    
    - A non-smart mobile phone (sometimes two)
    - An android tablet
    - A Pinebook pro laptop
        - A USB webcam and Microphone
    - A Lomo instant square polaroid camera
    - A xDuoo 3II media player

There were some other items, such a set of cassette-walkmen
(walkmans?), but those are not remarkably important to cover
here.  All of the items above filled a specific niche. The phones
were in my pocket so I was reachable at all times by SMS and
call. The android tablet was for reading books and annotating
papers.  The laptop was my university machine, meaning that I
used it to run vim and LaTeX, follow online classes, hand in
assignments, download study materials, and stay in touch with
colleagues. The Lomo camera was to capture memories of various
trips, hikes, and events. Lastly, the media player was there for
my ever present love of music.

Now to cover the principles. With this setup, I interpreted the
first principle as follows: Use simple software or build your
own. If a piece of software worked against my way of doing things
too much, I would modify it, or build a different system from
scratch. During this period, I made various mobile apps for my
Nokias including: weather info, bible reading, sudokus, tertris,
Google authenticator, and other miscellaneous things. I wrote my
own set of macros for the Troff typesetting system. I designed a
plaintext to pdf calendar system.  Lastly, I wrote basically an
entire desktop environment for Linux, save for the window
manager.

For portability, and environmentalism, a large consideration was
battery life.  The Nokias needed to be charged once per week, the
xDuoo even less frequently.  The camera ran on two 1.5 v
batteries which lasted well over a year, and the laptop and
tablet had such low power draw that I could charge them with my
tiny 20w portable solar panel.

The setup was furthermore portable because I could decide exactly
what to bring for every trip, carrying no more or less than I
needed.  This was also how I embraced digital minimalism at the
time. Even though there were many devices in my daily rotation,
every device was itself minimalistic, aiming to do no more or
less than I required of it.

The new setup
-------------

As I said, my new setup has a very different daily rotation. I
now use:

    - A 6th generation iPad mini
    - A 2017 Samsung galaxy A7 smartphone

Quite a shorter list eh? So what happened? When I returned to my
home country over the summer, I met up with my grandparents who
expressed a wish to video call me on occasion, something which
was not possible with my devices at the time (because my
grandparents insisted on using WhatsApp). I noted that I would
consider getting an old smartphone for that purpose, though I
tried to convince them to just use signal, zoom, discord, skype,
or really anything that was not WhatsApp (even though I highly
dislike all of these platforms). At this point, my grandfather
pulled his `old smartphone' from the shelf. A device which is
still fully capable of performing the tasks a smartphone needs to
do. The only thing that is aged about is is the USB micro-B
charging port.

As such, I switched from my two beautiful Nokia flipphones to a
one dual-sim- smartphone. The primary reason I fully switched,
rather than just keeping the Samsung around for video calls, is
that I really did not want to add yet another device to my
rotation. The smartphone also came with some other benefits.
Here in Norway, many, many things work using apps: Loyalty cards,
public transport, banking, library cards, digital identification,
two factor authentication, etcetera. For most of these services
therefore, I had specific cards or devices issues by the bank,
government, university, and so forth.  Each of these cards and
devices lived in my wallet, though switching to apps for these
things, I have managed to completely get rid of my wallet, simply
carrying a few cards in my phone case (cash is not a thing in
Norway anyways). The smartphone also did away with the need for a
separate media player and camera.  Both of these devices still
have their uses, one as a powerful DAC, the other for vacation
pictures, but neither are now part of my daily rotation.

Thus far the story behind the smartphone, but what about the
other items? Well, the android tablet started misbehaving, and it
really was not suited anymore for everyday use. I decided to buy
an iPad because -- according to my experience with them -- they
last remarkably long, both in hardware and software. I
furthermore wanted to try out the apple pencil for annotations,
and perhaps even for notetaking during classes, rather than my
paper/pen setup from back then.

While shopping for this iPad, I considered getting a slightly
more capable one, such as the iPad air, and using it as my main
computing device, in essence replacing my laptop. My conclusion
from everything I read online at the time though, was that the
software ecosystem was simply not mature enough to do this.
Then, a few weeks after buying the iPad, my laptop broke down. It
was not a major issue, requiring at most a day work of repairs
and maybe 200 NOK in parts, but it was nevertheless annoying, and
I had neither the time nor energy for the repair at the time. I
decided then that I would try and see if I could get away with
just the iPad.

I started looking around for apps. As I mentioned in the _old
setup_ section, I used my laptop as a university device. The iPad
was already capable of running all of the university software for
assignments and communication, and I could access the library and
remote systems without problem. The main holdup however was my
writing setup. At this time, I was using LaTeX and vim. Luckily,
by this time, I had stopped modifying virtually all software I
used, and focused on portability by using standard and
widely-available software. Nevertheless, I still needed a LaTeX
compiler and a text editor for my iPad, preferably git as well,
and preferably free (both as in freedom and gratis). I looked
through the AppStore and tried nearly every free LaTeX app. Most
of them handed the compilation off to a server, which was not
suited for my purposes, and all of the ones I tried had VERY
barebone-editors, there was no good-, free- git app, and really,
I just wanted to go back to my comfortable tty.

It was while researching simply virtualising a Linux machine on
the iPad that I encountered an app called `a-shell'. Not a LaTeX
compiler, but a unix shell for iPad, which came with vim, git,
and LaTeX. I said it in the previous post, and I will say it
again: This app is THE SOLE REASON I can use the iPad as a laptop
replacement.  Over half of my daily screen time is spent on this
app alone, and while it is clunky an limited, it is good enough
for the work I need to do, that being writing. If you are a
programmer, you will not be able to live on iPad OS, but if you
are a writer comfortable with unix-like systems, then a-shell is
the place to go.

So that is the new setup. It embraces minimalism in the number of
devices (I see it as carrying around two multitools, rather than
having a full toolbox), and it embraces portability, because I
can bring all my tech everywhere as long as I have a small bag or
cargo pants. As far as the whole `the device works for me' thing,
this is something which my perspective changed a lot on over the
years.  Previously I wanted to control everything on my devices.
I did not want a single program to run without my knowledge and
consent. This lead to much frustration with virtually all devices
except for those running Linux, or single-purpose devices.
Nowadays, I just let the device to whatever it wants as long as
it does not get in my way. I use the skills I gathered in the
past to modify, and manipulate my tech (especially the
smartphone) to stay out of my way wherever necessary, but I
no-longer care enough to do a full sweep and really clamp the
device down.

That leaves us with the final principle: environmentalism. This
is always a difficult topic when talking about changing what
devices you use. The primary environmental problem with tech is
e-waste, and I am contributing to the problem. I try to minimize
my impact by giving most of my old devices new homes, and new
purposes, but not many people are interested these days in a
flipphone from 2005, with a glued-on keyboard and a broken
display. At the very least, I used these devices to their limit,
giving them use well after others had already thrown them away.

But after reuse and reduce, there is only recycle left, and I
know that much of the rare-earth metals in electronic devices
cannot be recycled. I hope to offset my damage a bit by donating
to wildlife conservation organisations such as Mossy Earth (and I
suggest you do the same), and other than that I will to keep my
current devices alive as long as possible. At least the
smartphone and keyboard were second-hand, though this seems a
small drop in the bucket for the overall e-waste problem. One day
I will likely write about the right-to-repair movement, and it
impact on environmental concerns, but that day is not today.

If you have any questions or comments regarding my old-or-new
setup, please send me an email. The address is
<blog@wester.digital>. I would be especially interested in
hearing your thoughts on breathing new life into my old devices,
especially the unstable android tablet, and the old Nokias.